Immigration Reform 2013: Obama Says Senate Bill ‘Would Pass’ In House If Introduced

Talk is going around that a comprehensive immigration reform might be dead in the water until at least 2015. If it is, Barack Obama thinks the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Republicans in the House of Representatives. On Friday, the president appeared on ABC's "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos, where he pointed to popular support for the ideas contained in the Senate's comprehensive bill - which Boehner has refused to introduce for consideration in the House - and said that if Boehner were to put it up for debate, it would earn enough votes to pass.

"If Speaker Boehner put that bill on the floor of the House of Representatives right now, it would pass. It would pass," said Obama when Stephanopoulos asked him how he would respond to the argument that this has been a "lost year" for the president's plans. "So the question then is not whether or not the ideas that we've put forward can garner a majority of support certainly in the country... The problem we have is we have a faction of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives in particular, that view "compromise" as a dirty word, and anything that is even remotely associated with me, they feel obliged to oppose."

Obama also praised the broad coalition of interests which has formed in support of the Senate bill. "We got a terrific bipartisan vote out of the Senate that showed that there is a recognition from all quarters, from business, from labor, from the clergy, from farm interests, that a sensible immigration policy will grow our economy, make us stronger," he said. "So you had Democrats and Republicans in the Senate come together, come up with a bill that wasn't perfect, it wasn't my bill, but got the job done. It's now sitting there in the House."

In early July, after the Senate passed its immigration bill, House Republicans convened in the basement of Capitol Hill to try to hash out a consensus on how it would approach the issue. Some GOP members indicated that none had been reached, with Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) telling Reuters that his party was split "50-50" on the question of granting legal status to undocumented immigrants - the central point of contention in the debate. But House leadership, at least, emerged united on whether or not they would introduce the Senate's bill: the Obama administration, Boehner said then, "cannot be trusted to deliver on its promises to secure the border and enforce laws as part of a single, massive bill like the one passed by the Senate." Since then, House Republicans have considered a series of small, single-issue immigration bills as part of their declared "piecemeal" approach.

President Obama indicated that there was little he could do in the face of GOP opposition to the Senate's immigration bill. "My argument to them is real simple. That's not why the people sent you here...all I can do when it comes to that group of members of Congress is to continue to talk to 'em and say, 'Let's put aside our differences. Let's stay focused on the American people.' If we do that, we can get things done."

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