A “crisis” of their own making
by David Atkins
Republicans are very upset with the “imperial Presidency.” Not for reasons that many decent people are be upset with regard to various 4th Amendment issues, but because the President delayed implementation of his own law that Republicans despise and want to repeal.
Because that makes sense.
But Republicans will likely soon have an even bigger reason to want to sue and impeach the President: impending executive action on the immigration crisis. But as Greg Sargent notes, that wouldn’t be a problem if Republicans in Congress could get their act together to do something about it. As it turns out, they can’t:
So today House Republicans may take one more stab at trying to pass a bill to address the border crisis. But their bill has been jacked so far to the right that Dems won’t support it, and at any rate, last night Republicans blocked the Senate Dem border proposal. So Congress won’t address the crisis until September at the earliest.
The question now is how far this goes in clearing space for Obama to act alone on immigration — not just on the border crisis, but on easing deportations. And the president is letting Republicans know that they should be worried about this.
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And this underscores a key fact about this whole debate: It is precisely because Republicans won’t move out of their comfort zone on immigration — where the only response to the immigration crisis they can entertain is further militarizing of the border and expedited/expanded deportations — that Obama is now going to resort to more action on his own.
If Republicans had passed immigration reform that included some form of legal status for the 11 million, it would have wiped away the need for Obama’s deferred-deportation program and we wouldn’t even be talking about expanding it, meaning no need for Republicans to fear more Obummer Lawlessness. Reform would have spent more on border security and helped unclog the courts, speeding the removal of arriving migrants — which Republicans support. If it had passed — or if Republicans gave him the money he’s asked for to deal with the current crisis — we would not be talking about him acting alone to shift more resources from interior enforcement to the border, either.
No question, the politics of Obama’s coming executive action are dicey for Democrats. But Dems can bolster their position by contrasting unilateral problem solving with GOP inaction on the border — including the fact that they would not act because they want ever more deportations from the interior — and on immigration reform in general.
People expect their government to take action to resolve crises. Republicans in Congress have shown themselves incapable of even agreeing within their own caucus, much less being able to resolve problems in a bipartisan way. But they also want to sue and impeach the President if he does anything on his own.
They’re quite literally a dysfunctional political party sabotaging the proper functioning of government.
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