I'm a big fan of my Senator, Chris Murphy. I think he's quite thoughtful, hard-working and principled. His work with James Lankford on the immigration bill was an example of shouldering a thankless burden (on both men's part) and doing the hard work of actually legislating.
The decision by the GOP to spit the bit on a bill that they demanded is - if nothing else - a spectacular reminder that the Republican party cannot legislate.
Jon Chait notes that there are two reasons for the GOP killing what was in many ways their own bill, both of them political. The first has been widely discussed, which is that Trump wants to campaign on chaos at the border. This bill would have greatly reduced that chaos, so they killed it. The second, subtler, reason is that the Biden Administration has been an interesting mixture of left wing ideas and rhetoric and middle of the road legislating. Biden has passed a surprising amount of legislation before the lunatics took over the House.
Passing a bipartisan immigration bill would reinforce that Biden is Biden - a slightly center-left Irish pol who likes to solve problems and make people happy. It reinforces Biden's essential moderation.
As a result, the GOP has been forced to come with post-hoc reasons for killing the bill that met most of their demands. These reasons are pretty shitty and most of them deal with lies. For instance, they claim that the bill allows for 5,000 people a day to enter the country illegally before anything is done. That - unsurprisingly - is bullshit. The 5,000 number refers to people who cross the border illegally and asylum seekers.
The whole problem today is with asylum seekers, because the asylum system is broken. You flee from, say, Haiti through Mexico and get to the border. You cross, seek out a Border Patrol Agent and ask for asylum. The system is so backlogged, that you are released into the US to await a hearing that is several years away. Trump's efforts to simply send asylum seekers back home was stopped by Circuit Court injunction, because it violate the asylum laws. This is why the new law is necessary.
Joe Walsh - former hard-right asshole, now repentant centrist - has said that the optics won't matter. People "trust" Trump and the GOP more on being mean to immigrants. My hope is that we will shortly have a presidential address on the immigration bill whereby Biden touts the bipartisan nature, the centrality of fixing the asylum system and his eagerness to work with reasonable Republicans on a compromise. Since there are no reasonable Republicans, this should help Biden keep that centrist mantle he desperately needs leading into the election.
No comments:
Post a Comment