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September 05, 2017 12:18 PM UTC

Ending DACA: Gardner Dodges, Tancredo Celebrates

  • 18 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: As Politico reports in a separate story, Congressional Republicans really have no idea what to do next:

House Republican leaders, already scrambling to avoid a government shutdown and a default on the nation’s debt, are privately hoping to push the immigration battle until at least this winter. [Pols emphasis] They, like the White House, want a down payment on Trump’s border wall with Mexico in exchange for codifying the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — though House Democrats won’t say whether they’d accept tougher immigration restrictions in order to save the program…

…Multiple pro-DACA House and Senate sources have speculated that a legislative fix for “Dreamers” could pass the House with moderate Republicans and Democratic support. But Ryan would take serious heat from conservatives if he were to allow that without getting anything in return.

That’s why Republican leaders, working with the White House, will likely seek a narrow immigration deal that would extend the program while adopting some of Trump’s signature campaign promises on immigration.

—–

Tom Tancredo (right).

Politico reports on today’s announcement via Attorney General Jeff Sessions that President Donald Trump’s administration will indeed end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, putting hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who came here as children at risk of deportation:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s administration is rescinding an Obama-era policy that provided work permits to undocumented immigrants who were brought into the country as children, with a six-month wind-down period that allows Congress to act on the issue first.

“I’m here today to announce that the program known as DACA that was effectuated under the Obama administration is being rescinded,” Sessions told reporters, adding that the Justice Department has advised Trump and the Department of Homeland Security to “begin an orderly, lawful wind-down, including the cancellation of the memo that authorized this program.”

“This will enable DHS to conduct an orderly change and fulfill the desire of this administration to create a time period for Congress to act — should it so choose. We firmly believe this is the responsible path,” Sessions said, encouraging lawmakers to “carefully and thoughtfully” pursue immigration reform.

Other than the above comment about Congress acting “should it so choose,” there was little in today’s announcement from Sessions to comfort DACA beneficiaries and their supporters. Sessions in particular validated incendiary right-wing tropes about DREAMer kids “taking jobs” from Americans, for which evidence is dubious at best. Such comments don’t inspire confidence that a legislative solution protecting DACA recipients would be signed into law.

Certainly not if possible Colorado GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo has anything to say about it, as he writes at Breitbart today:

By ending the government’s issuance of new DACA work permits but not canceling them immediately, the president is generously allowing them to expire over the next two years. Thus, Congress can “save DACA” by enacting amendments to current immigration law. But, as the saying goes, the devil is in the details, and — surprise! — there is no consensus among Republicans on what “saving DACA” means or how to do it. The Republican lawmakers who want to give legal status to the 780,000 current beneficiaries of DACA will be at war with others who want to use their fate as the excuse to pass a much broader amnesty affecting millions.

The noxious flavor of the Republican dilemma is illustrated by the political gymnastics of Republican Congressman Michael Coffman of Colorado. Coffman is so desirous of maintaining his “amnesty panderer in chief” status that he says he is going to offer a bill to order President Trump to continue the unlawful Obama program. More astonishing, Coffman is so desperate to save DACA that he has begun threatening to file a discharge petition — which needs 218 signatures — to force his bill out of committee and bring it to a vote on the House floor. Of course, this is just for optics. Discharge petitions rarely succeed and he knows it. Doesn’t matter. He thinks it plays well with the people for whom he is so desperate to prostitute himself and the Republican party.

Herein lies the dilemma faced by not just Rep. Mike Coffman, but any Republican who wants to help save the GOP from major political damage over the issue of protecting DREAMer child immigrants: there’s no consensus in the Republican Party to do that. As we noted this weekend, any attempt to resolve the issue is going to require Republicans to abandon the informal “Hastert Rule” requiring bills to have the support of the “majority of the majority” because there aren’t enough Republicans willing to agree DREAMers deserve protection at all.

A lot of them are in Tom Tancredo’s camp. Including, apparently, Jeff Sessions.

Sen. Cory Gardner paid lip service to protecting DACA recipients in his statement today, though not without playing the blame game:

I’m currently working with my colleagues in Congress about the next legislative steps we can take to ensure these children continue to have the opportunity to be in this country. We are in this situation today because the program was created through executive action by the previous administration instead of through Congress…

In attempting to lay blame for the current situation at the feet of the Obama administration, Gardner deliberately ignores the 2013 immigration reform legislation that passed the U.S. Senate before dying in the chamber he served in–and the more general refusal by the Republican Congress under President Obama to do anything that might be considered good for Obama’s legacy. Blaming Obama for GOP obstruction is of course nothing new for Gardner, though at this point it’s a laughably threadbare point.

Because Democrats aren’t anyone’s problem now. This is about Republicans choosing what their legacy will be.

Comments

18 thoughts on “Ending DACA: Gardner Dodges, Tancredo Celebrates

    1. Isn't it possible that Republicans are terrible at governing?  And They never take responsibility for their actions.  Also your President can't seem to negotiate his way out of a paper bag.  Why else would a ghostwriter have to write "The Art of the Deal".

    2. As we all recall, the Republicans in the House and the Senate vowed to oppose everything President Obama supported. They vowed absolute opposition the day he was inaugurated in January 2009. If he would have asked Congress to pass a resolution that the sky is blue, the Republicans would have opposed it. I don't know whether President Obama was a good negotiator or not, but that doesn't matter since the Republicans wouldn't negotiate.

  1. This situation requires me to depart from my usual decorum, politeness, & common sense conservatism around here.

    "isn't it just possible that Moderatus is a real doofus dumb ass for asking such a question?"

    1. As I said on another forum this morning, Conman Cory's been whopped upside the head with the knowledge that he now represents ALL of Colorado, not just xenophobic CD-4.

      1. So Con Man voted to confirm General Beauregard Sessions – the loudest proponent of abolishing DACA – as A.G.

        But now he's co-sponsoring a bill to make DACA law. 

        A cynic might say he trying to have it both way.

         

         

  2. How many are old enough to remember the famous National Lampoon cover, "If you don't buy this magazine, we'll kill this dog"? I am not tech savvy enough to embed the image.

    This seems to be the Republicans'  go-to strategy. If you (Democrats) don't agree to pay for an unpopular border wall, we are going to deport Dreamers (even more unpopular than the wall). They just keep coming up with worse and worse messes (debt default, a government shut down, roll back of Medicaid, blow up ACA) and hope that the Democrats will give them what they want rather than let them adopt wildly unpopular and destructive policies. 

    Maybe the more accurate pop culture reference is Blazing Saddles, where the black sheriff, faced with an angry, racist, gun toting mob, puts his gun to his own head saying, "Next one that makes a move, the n**** gets it." Of course the Republicans, I mean racists let him escape.

    1. All that and they only have 25 days left to repeal Obamacare using reconciliation. After September 30, it needs 60 votes.

      Unless they try again during next year's budget drama. In an election year.

  3. NE CO Dreamers talk back:

     

    Las Estrellas, marching in Yuma, CO August 11, 2017. Video by Craig Stevens. Cory Gardner cruises through in a sealed cab red Case tractor at about 4:00 in. Michael Bennet speaks to the crowd at about 7:50 in. A Win the Fourth (WTF) production.

    1. Dreamers FTW.  The Yuma County economy would collapse without the contribution of these good people. 

      Did you catch the sign on the front of Gardner's tractor at 4:07?

      "It's all about family, friends & community too!"

      Let's see if he can turn that slogan into action? 

      1. How to think like a Republican…

        If you faced an extreme labor shortage, would you exacerbate that shortage by eliminating the workforce?  Especially if it would blow a hole in the Federal budget, thus increasing the deficit, raising costs to older Americans who can least afford it?

        Why of course you would!

        As a basic matter of economics, removing tens of thousands of workers from occupations that already suffer from a serious labor shortage — the Labor Department predicts that the country will need more than 1.25 million home health aides by 2024, up from about 900,000 in 2014 — generally has one unambiguous effect: driving up costs.

        The economic problem is twofold, however. First, the government, through Medicaid, often pays the salaries of home health workers, meaning that escalating wages could blow a hole in the federal budget. (Medicaid, through the decisions of the state and federal governments, effectively caps compensation for home health workers, but the caps could rise more quickly in a world of plunging labor supply.)

        Second, an acute shortage of home health workers could force many older and disabled Americans out of their homes and into care facilities, where costs are roughly two-to-three times the cost of home care for a full year. The government typically picks up that tab as well.

        Pretty much designed to do maximum human and financial damage without any redeeming benefits, except to reassure paranoid Republicans that there aren't any monsters underneath their beds anymore…

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