Pelosi: GOP leaves Obama no choice

President Obama has no choice but to act on his own on immigration reform because of the Republican Party’s inaction on the issue, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) insisted Thursday.

Republicans on Capitol Hill are up in arms ahead of Obama’s prime-time speech Thursday night, when he’s expected to unveil a plan to ease deportations of millions of illegal immigrants. The president will almost certainly frame his move in the context of keeping families intact. But Republicans are arguing it amounts to a power grab on Obama’s part.

Pelosi said the president’s conservative critics should redirect their ire toward House Republican leaders, who have refused to consider any immigration-related legislation in the long span since the Senate passed a sweeping reform bill with bipartisan support in June 2013.

{mosads}”We want a bill,” Pelosi said during a press briefing in the Capitol. 

“It’s over 500 days since the Senate passed a bill, and still no action by the House Republicans on anything — some small bill, some bigger bills, whatever. Nothing. Nothing,” she added. “And, really, this is a dereliction of duty not to address the broken immigration system.

“We cannot have the public be misled by the fact that the president is acting as presidents do, because we are not acting as legislators do, to pass laws,” Pelosi continued. 

The California Democrat said there’s still “plenty of time” for Republicans to preclude Obama’s action by passing legislation — “in fact even two weeks when we come back [in December],” she said. It’s a route GOP leaders have rejected.

Republicans were not always so reluctant to tackle the immigration issue. During the GOP’s annual issues conference in January, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and other party leaders unveiled a set of general immigration reform “principles” designed to guide the thorny debate. 

The move was a delicate attempt to appease both conservatives wary of granting special rights to illegal immigrants and national GOP leaders who worry that a failure to do so will further erode Hispanic support and thus doom the party’s presidential chances in 2016 and beyond.

Boehner’s strategy didn’t work. Instead, conservatives in the conference revolted, largely due to a provision allowing illegal immigrants to remain in the country and work without fear of deportation. Faced with the pressure from his right, Boehner shelved the issue and shifted his rhetoric, arguing that Republicans wouldn’t take up legislation because they simply didn’t trust Obama to implement the reforms in good faith.

“The biggest impediment we have moving immigration reform is that the American people don’t trust the president to enforce or implement the law that we may or may not pass,” Boehner said in April.

Pelosi on Thursday recounted that episode as evidence that Obama’s move to act unilaterally is justified. 

“They ran them [the principles] up the flagpole,” she said, “[and] their members chopped down the flagpole.” 

Speaking from the White House Thursday night, Obama is expected to outline a plan to shelter millions of illegal immigrants from deportation and provide them with the chance to get work permits, according to numerous reports. The following day, he will speak from a Las Vegas high school, rallying support for his decision.

Some Republicans are warning of a dramatic — perhaps violent — public backlash against what they see as an excessive use of presidential powers.

“The country’s going to go nuts, because they are going to see it as a move outside of the authority of the president, and it’s going to be a very dangerous situation,” retiring Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) told USA Today this week. “You’re going to see — hopefully not — but you could see instances of anarchy. You could see violence.”

Democrats have rejected the notion that Obama lacks the authority to ease deportations, citing a long list of executive action on immigration taken by past presidents from both parties including Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. 

“The president has great authority in the law to take these actions and great precedent of so many presidents from Eisenhower on,” Pelosi said.

She also dismissed the GOP argument that Obama’s executive action this month would undermine any bipartisan efforts to move immigration reform legislation in the next Congress. She said Republicans were leaning on that argument simply because their own members are so divided on the immigration issue.

“That’s not a reason not to cooperate with us,” she said. “It’s an excuse for them not to cooperate.”

Obama’s speech is slated for 8 p.m.