A key Republican working on immigration discounted senators who said Friday that passing their immigration bill will now push the House to act, saying that House lawmakers’ calculations are very different.
Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, a Florida Republican who has been working on an immigration bill with a bipartisan secretive group in the House, said the pressure for the House to act will come voters and from a broken immigration system, not from senators telling the House to pass the Senate bill.
“If anybody thinks that b/c there’s a senate bill the House will feel pressure, that’s just not true,” Mr. Diaz-Balart said at an event hosted by Bloomberg Government on Friday morning, just hours after the Senate cleared its bill.
After that 68-32 vote Sen. Charles E. Schumer said it should be a signal to the House, who he said should take the Senate bill in its entirety and pass it as-is.
“The American people want deficit reduction. This bill cuts $900 billion from the deficit. The American people want job creation. This bill grows the economy by additional 3 percent. And the American people want a strong border. And this plan shuts the door on future waves of illegal immigration. It will be unsustainable in my judgment for the House to oppose this bill,” the New York Democrat said.
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