MEMO: Speaker Boehner's Broken Promises & Lip Service on Immigration

July 24, 2015
Blog Post
MEMORANDUM 

To: Interested Parties

Fr:  Democratic Leader's Press Office

Dt: July 24, 2015

Re: Speaker Boehner's Broken Promises & Lip Service on Immigration

As Drew Hammill, Spokesman for Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, said:

"Speaker Boehner has time and again refused to take up commonsense legislation to fix our broken immigration system and offered excuses after excuses for his inaction.  As he proved yesterday, he'd rather capitalize on Donald Trump's polling numbers and take another opportunity to display the appalling depths of House Republicans' contempt for hard-working immigrant families than take action on comprehensive immigration reform."

***

  • 11/8/12: Speaker Boehner says he's "confident" Congress will pass comprehensive immigration reform, describing it as "an important issue that...ought to be dealt with."

  • 1/26/13: Speaker Boehner tells Ripon Society, a Republican public policy organization, that "it's time to deal" with immigration reform.

  • 5/23/13: With progress taking place in the Senate on CIR, Speaker Boehner says: "The House remains committed to fixing our broken immigration system....the House will work its will..."

  • 6/11/13: Another Speaker Boehner promise: "I think by the end of the year, we'll have an [immigration reform] bill."

  • 7/8/13:  After he refuses a vote on bipartisan, Senate-passed reform, Speaker Boehner says: "It is time for Congress to act. But I believe the House has its job to do, and we will do our job."

  • 7/23/13:  Speaker Boehner claims "Nobody has spent more time trying to fix a broken immigration system than I have."

  • 11/13/13: Confronted by teens, Speaker Boehner pledges to "find a way" to get immigration reform "done."

  • 11/21/13: Speaker Boehner insists that immigration is "absolutely not" dead.

  • 1/30/14: Speaker Boehner and House GOP release their now-abandoned, so-called "immigration standards."

  • 4/17/14: Speaker Boehner tells a group of donors he's "hell-bent on getting [immigration reform] done this year."

  • 4/24/14: Boehner mocks GOP Members for failing to take up immigration: "Here's the attitude – Ohhh, don't make me do this.  Ohhh, this is too hard."

  • 5/22/14: Boehner tells Univision's Jorge Ramos: "There's nobody more interested in fixing [immigration] than I am."

  • 9/3/14: The Speaker reports to Hugh Hewitt that "You know, there's a possibility that Congress could take this issue up next year."

  • 9/18/14:  At the American Enterprise Institute, Boehner says the immigration system "needs to be fixed.  We're a nation of immigrants, the sooner we do it, the better off the country would be."

  • 9/28/14:  More of the Speaker's lip service – "I said the day after the 2012 election it was time to do immigration reform.  I meant it then and I mean it today."

  • 11/6/14:  Speaker Boehner says: "It is time for the Congress of the United States to deal with a very difficult issue in our society.  This immigration issue has become a political football over the last ten years or more.  It is just time to deal with it."

  • 7/3/15: Addressing a crowd in Ireland, Speaker Boehner vows to "overcome Republican resistance to immigration reform."

  • 7/12/15: On CBS' ‘Face the Nation,' Speaker Boehner tells John Dickerson: "I've been trying to do immigration reform for four years…I want to do immigration reform…"

The House Speaker may cough up more empty, broken promises, but he's not fooling anyone.  If he and the GOP were serious about fixing our broken system, they'd drop the "phony" excuses and end their "resistance" to comprehensive immigration reform.