Ryan and McCarthy split on Dreamers

Paul Ryan and his longtime No. 2, Kevin McCarthy, have maintained a unified public front on immigration — but behind the scenes, the interests of the outgoing speaker and his potential successor are colliding over controversial Dreamers legislation.

Both have vehemently opposed an effort by centrist Republicans to force votes on bills shielding young undocumented immigrants who came here as children from deportation. But to stop it, Ryan floated the possibility of reigniting talks on a bipartisan deal that President Donald Trump could get behind.

McCarthy, on the other hand, has panned that idea. He worries that such an accord codifying the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program would demoralize GOP voters whom the party needs to show up in the midterms to keep the House.

“If you want to depress [GOP voter] intensity, this is the No. 1 way to do it,” McCarthy told his colleagues in a closed-door meeting Wednesday.

But McCarthy wants to be speaker, and a DACA deal could jeopardize his chances, since conservatives hate the idea. Hard-line conservatives tanked McCarthy’s last bid for speaker in 2015, and the majority leader has made a concerted effort to court them in recent months.

“That’s one of the challenges of Ryan announcing that he was not going to seek reelection: Now everybody is kind of looking to [McCarthy],” said Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who has not signed on to the bid to force a floor vote on DACA but would like to see the situation resolved.

During a meeting with Trump at the White House this week, Ryan and McCarthy laid out their current predicament on immigration. House moderates would soon garner enough signatures to force the entire conference to vote on bipartisan DACA bills — what did the president want them to do?

Ryan made the case for re-opening talks to find a possible immigration deal, according to several sources briefed on the meeting. Trump could get his wall with Mexico, Dreamers could get legal certainty and such a deal could stave off a potential shutdown fight this fall, went the pitch.

But Trump didn’t seem interested, the sources said. Rather than jumping at the opportunity to negotiate, he told Ryan and McCarthy that the so-called discharge petition to force a vote was the House’s problem.

McCarthy, notably, hasn’t been trying to change Trump’s mind — even though the California Republican is tight with the president. That’s probably because McCarthy simply isn’t interested. Asked briefly on Thursday about the possibility of a bipartisan DACA deal this year, he said, “I don’t see a path.”

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/...s-clash-597381

McCarthy and Trump are assholes.

@ChadPergram
GOP ldrshp is now hearing it in stereo from both conservatives and moderates in the Republican Conference who insist the House address immigration/DACA right away. Moderates are on the verge of going over the heads of the brass and pushing a set of immigration bills onto the flr

Uprsing of moderates & conservatives in GOP Conference is symptom of the departure of House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and a test for Speaker-wannbees House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA).

Ryan tried to decouple the the farm bill from immigration. But has been able to execute that strategy.

@pdmcleod
6m6 minutes ago
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Democrats are now piling onto a discharge petition to overrule Paul Ryan and force a DACA debate. They’re at 153 signatures. Still a ways to go to 218.

@JakeSherman
27m27 minutes ago
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NEW house gop immigration plan

@SpeakerRyan trying to sideswipe the discharge petition by offering each ideological slice of the gop a bill in June.

@JakeSherman

Why force a politically difficult vote and not resolve this issue? Sometimes the pundits and media wish and hope we never get relief so that they can keep their story going .

The discharge petition has a 99.9% chance of succeeding and McCarthy is doing all he can to derail it, so no, Reps Denham, Curbelo et al have had enough of the bs, we need to start fixing immigration and move the country forward.

It’s 50/50 still missing 5 rebloods

Friday, May 18, 2018
154. John A. Yarmuth Kentucky 03
155. Anna G. Eshoo California 18
156. Frank Pallone New Jersey 06
157. Ro Khanna California 17