Byron York's Daily Memo: The GOP fight that stopped Trump's immigration plan
by Byron York, Chief Political Correspondent |
| November 08, 2021 08:00 AM
THE GOP FIGHT THAT STOPPED TRUMP'S IMMIGRATION PLAN. In the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump's highest-profile promise was to build the wall — that is, to construct a barrier along about 1,000 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. Once elected, Trump's best chance to win money from Congress for a wall came in 2018, when Republican Speaker Paul Ryan controlled the House and Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell controlled the Senate.
It didn't happen. Now, one of Trump's strongest supporters on Capitol Hill, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, is out with a new memoir , Do What You Said You Would Do, out Nov. 23, that describes those months when GOP lawmakers fought over competing visions of immigration reform. The battle was intense, it was passionate, and it came to nothing. No stricter immigration laws were passed, and there was no significant funding for a wall. For that failure, Jordan points the finger of blame straight at then-Speaker Ryan.
"Paul Ryan is not where the American people are," Jordan writes. "Paul Ryan's position on immigration is the same as the positions of the National Chamber of Commerce." In the world of conservative immigration policy activists, accusing someone of siding with the Chamber of Commerce is about as harsh as it gets.
As Jordan tells it, Ryan sabotaged Republican immigration reform by refusing to support a bill that the large majority of Republicans supported, instead pushing a weaker bill that the chamber supported. The result was that, facing united Democratic opposition, neither Republican bill passed.
more
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/byron-yorks-daily-memo-the-gop-fight-that-stopped-trumps-immigration-plan
