Reminder: Obama, Dems punted on immigration reform

by NW Spotlight

In his press conference this past week, the day after the stunning Republican victories, President Obama gave Congress a six-week deadline to send him an immigration reform bill or he’d take executive action.

Answering a question on immigration reform, the President said “You send me a bill that I can sign, and those executive actions go away,” followed by a warning reminder that he would “act in the absence of action by Congress. So, before the end of the year, we’re going to take whatever lawful actions that I can take.”

So in the time that Congress has until the end of the year, working around the holidays, President Obama expects Congress to accomplish in six weeks what he hasn’t been able to accomplish in six years. And this is a Congress where the Senate is still controlled by Democrats until January.

The bigger point, though, is why didn’t the President pass immigration reform in the first two of those six years? That’s when Democrats controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress. There was nothing stopping them.

Candidate Barrack Obama promised back in 2008 to have an immigration bill within his first year that he’d be supporting and promoting. Candidate Obama told an interviewer on Univision “But what I can guarantee is that we will have in the first year an immigration bill that I strongly support and that I’m promoting.” A year and a half into his first term, the left-leaning PolitiFact rated that a “Promise Broken.”