Immigration Reform 2014: House Republicans Block Democratic Attempt To Slip In Funding For Comprehensive Bill

House Republicans blocked on Wednesday a Democratic attempt to slip funding for a comprehensive immigration reform bill into a House budget bill. The chamber’s GOP-led Budget Committee voted along party lines, 21-15, against an amendment introduced by Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.). Democrats sought to cast the issue as one of economic responsibility. "Today we raise a simple question with this amendment: are you for or against creating more than 100,000 jobs per year and $900 billion towards debt reduction?" said Cárdenas at the budget meeting, according to the Huffington Post.

H.R. 15, which Democrats in the chamber proposed in October to scant Republican support, is largely identical to a bipartisan reform which passed the Senate last summer before stalling in the House. Its lone exception concerns the nation’s borders: H.R. 15 removes the Senate bill’s “border surge” amendment, which set aside $46 billion toward manpower, drones and surveillance technologies, and replaces it with a version which sets similar goals but hangs no specific price tag on them.

The move came a week after the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) responded to House Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) request to estimate the financial impact of H.R. 15. “We expect that enacting H.R. 15 would increase direct spending and revenues by about the same amounts as [the Senate’s comprehensive bill] S. 744,” the CBO wrote, “for a net reduction in federal budget deficits of about $200 billion over the 2015-2024 period and significantly greater amounts in the decade following 2024.”

NBC Latino writes that in his objection to Cárdenas’ remarks, Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) affirmed House Republican support for addressing the issue through a “piecemeal” approach which leads with border-security and enhanced interior immigration enforcement. "Here is our problem with this amendment: we don't support the Senate bill," said Ryan at the meeting.

In a Spanish-language press release issued following the vote, Rep. Cárdenas warned that those “who voted in favor of this amendment and those who voted against it will be responsible for their vote”, adding that he was “frankly disappointed that partisan politics had won out”.