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White House seeks Republican immigration help

Quote:

President Barack Obama hasn’t given up on immigration reform, but he still needs a way to break through with House Republicans.

The White House has reached out to former George W. Bush administration officials, conservative business leaders and selected House members, all in search of a way to hone a message that can move House leaders without scaring them off.

In closed-door meetings, they have urged the White House to find a way to reach out to the GOP that doesn’t center on Obama banging the podium telling Speaker John Boehner to bring a bill to the floor. During the Senate debate, Obama mostly stayed out of the limelight, for fear his involvement would end any hope of a bipartisan success. But his staffers were heavily involved behind the scenes.

White House aides recognize the situation with the House is similar, but participants in the meetings say the president’s team simply doesn’t know where to start with an inside game.

On Tuesday, Obama met with the chief executives of eight companies to press his immigration case. The CEOs were circumspect after the meeting about what the president asked of them.

“Everyone wants to see immigration reform occur, so the question is simply the best way to do that,” said Roger Altman, chairman of investment banking firm Evercore Partners who served in the Treasury Department during the Carter and Clinton administrations.

Time is running out this year. House Republican leaders have not committed to a vote before year’s end and GOP leadership aides say there is no plan to move a series of smaller bills that could get the matter to a House-Senate conference — which has become the primary realistic goal of immigration reformers.

Conservatives sympathetic to the immigration reform effort, including former Bush Cabinet secretaries Michael Chertoff and Carlos Gutierrez; Carl Thorsen, former general counsel to ex-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay who is now working for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s immigration group; and representatives from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, met last month with White House chief of staff Denis McDonough and domestic policy adviser Cecilia Munoz.

Conservatives in the White House meeting said one suggestion was to reach out to Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), but White House officials were blank.

“It didn’t come across that they were really clear on who they should talk to,” one of the meeting participants said. “They didn’t say anything that would lead us to believe they have a plan.”

When the White House sought a meeting with House Republicans to discuss immigration reform strategy last month, it didn’t invite Reps. Jeff Denham and David Valadao of California, among the most vocal advocates in the conference for comprehensive immigration reform. The pair have been working privately with other GOP lawmakers on legalization bills.

It later rescinded an invitation to one pro-reform Republican eager to meet with the White House, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, and that meeting has yet to be rescheduled, according to his office.

And at least two Texas Republicans rejected the White House overtures: Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul and, according to a GOP source, Rep. Sam Johnson, who quit working on an immigration bill citing his lack of trust with the Obama administration. McCaul said on a conservative radio show that he viewed the meeting as a “political trap.”

The White House says it’s holding the series of meetings with business leaders not so much to plan or reveal strategy but to get them to buy into the Obama immigration push and hope the visitors put pressure on the recalcitrant House GOP leadership.

“The president and his team have met and will continue to meet with the broad range of stakeholders that are vested in seeing immigration reform signed into law, most of whom backed the bipartisan bill that passed the Senate,” White House spokesman Bobby Whithorne said. “That includes Democrats and Republicans, current and former lawmakers, business leaders, religious leaders, law enforcement officials and anyone else that can help us make the case to House leadership that immigration reform is a no-brainer for our economy and that the bipartisan Senate bill or something like it deserves a vote.”

But White House involvement won’t be limited to behind-the-scenes discussions. Obama will do periodic events and interviews with the Spanish-language press to offer a subtle reminder to Republicans that the issue won’t go away before the 2014 midterm elections.

After the government shutdown ended, Obama renewed his push for immigration reform and said the only way it will happen is through a public effort.

“Keep putting the pressure on all of us to get this done,” Obama said last month. “There are going to be moments — and there are always moments like this in big efforts at reform — where you meet resistance, and the press will declare something dead, it’s not going to happen, but that can be overcome.”

Business leaders and conservatives meeting at the White House say they want the administration’s involvement on some level.

“I was surprised about how aggressive people in that room were, how aggressive they were on saying, ‘We need White House leadership, we need a plan, we need for you to be driving this thing,’” said a person in the room with McDonough and Munoz.

“One of the things that is comforting to us is that when we do talk to them and they ask us for advice, they are asking from the frame of, ‘We know that a lot of stuff we do isn’t going to be helpful, so how can we be helpful?’” said Jeremy Robbins, executive director of the Partnership for a New American Economy, the pro-reform group backed by Bloomberg and News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said recently that it’s long been established that the president cannot move House GOP votes.

“This is something that House Republicans need to work out,” Carney said. “They control the keys to the car in that house right now of Congress, and they need to decide how they move forward and what legislation they can move forward. And we’re going to work as best we can to move this process forward.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who distanced himself from his own Senate Gang of Eight bill after seeing his influence diminish following his work to shepherd the legislation through the chamber, also said the president isn’t going to move House Republicans no matter what he does.

“I think the distrust of this administration is deep, but he’s the president, he’s allowed to speak on whatever he wants,” Rubio said. “Ultimately, this issue needs to be decided first in the Congress, and I’m not sure how much influence he’s going to have on the House.”

The government shutdown fight and Obama’s failure to establish relationships with Republicans haven’t helped either.

“This whole fight we had in the … past few weeks over Obamacare and the government shutdown and everything really affected relationships with members and the White House,” Valadao said. “That, I think, had a huge impact on members who were on the fence on immigration.”

Meanwhile, the conservative groups working to pass immigration reform are happy working without substantial coordination from the White House. Being seen as too close to Obama would sap their credibility with House Republicans, even as they parrot the White House talking points.

“We’re keeping the White House at arms length and the White House is not really engaging with folks directly and they’re really paying heed to the reality that this has to be owned lock, stock and barrel by the House Republicans,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum.

Tamar Jacoby, president and CEO of the pro-reform business group ImmigrationWorks USA, said the biggest current obstacle of immigration reform in the House is that Republicans “don’t want to do Obama any favors” after the toxic shutdown and debt limit battles.

“When Obama’s out there saying, ‘I just won a big battle … and I’m demanding you do this,’ no one’s going to want to do it on those terms,” Jacoby said. “My fear is that Obama’s not really helping [reform] when he’s sort of scolding them about it all the time.”

By REID J. EPSTEIN