House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that there's no need to tackle immigration or gun reform as part of a sweeping spending package poised for a vote as early as next week.
"None of these bills has to be part of the omnibus," Pelosi told reporters in the Capitol. She's urging the Republicans to bring those issues to the floor as separate, stand-alone bills - a strategy GOP leaders have repeatedly refused.
Pelosi last month had led the opposition to a similar budget deal, not because of what it contained, but to protest the refusal of GOP leaders to commit to a separate vote shoring up the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which President Trump is attempting to terminate.
Immigration rights activists are pressing the Democrats to use their leverage on the omnibus vote - which is among the last must-pass bills of the year - to insist on provisions protecting the so-called Dreamers, young immigrants brought to the country illegally as kids. Some gun reformers are urging a similar tactic to force action on new firearm controls as a response to the recent shooting massacre at a Florida high school.
But Democratic leaders, eying big gains in November's midterms, have been cold to that strategy. Senate Democrats had been blamed for a government shutdown over DACA earlier in the year, and there seems to be little appetite among the party's brass to risk another round of political blowback over issues as contentious as immigration and guns.
Pelosi has given no indication she's planning another protest surrounding the omnibus vote. And on Thursday, she suggested there won't be one. The sticking points in the omnibus are not related to immigration or guns, she said, but to conservative provisions restricting abortion rights.
"The omnibus bill has other problems in it," she said.
"There's suggested language that we could never live with - could never live with - even if Dreamers never existed. So the bill may have problems in other respects, whether it's women's right to choose [or] defunding Planned Parenthood," Pelosi added.
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