Try for citizenship legislation in doubt
Against rules, parliamentarian finds
WASHINGTON — Existing rules do not allow Democrats to use their proposed $3.5 trillion tax-and-spending package to give millions of migrants a chance to become citizens, the Senate’s parliamentarian said late Sunday.
The ruling by Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate’s nonpartisan interpreter of the body’s often enigmatic rules, marks a significant setback for a long-sought goal of President Joe Biden, congressional Democrats and their allies in the pro-immigration and progressive communities. It also damages Democrats’ hopes of unilaterally enacting — over Republican opposition — changes to let several categories of migrants gain permanent residence and possibly citizenship.
The parliamentarian decided that the immigration language should not be included in an immense bill that’s been shielded from GOP filibusters.
Because of the special fast-track procedure DemDEL
ocrats are trying to use to enact the $3.5 trillion bill, all parts must conform to Senate rules, chiefly that each provision be directly related to the federal budget. The process, called reconciliation, allows Democrats to pass their bill with only 50 votes plus the tie-breaking vote of the vice president.
Left vulnerable to filibusters, which require 60 Senate votes to end, the immigration provisions would have little chance in the 50-50 Senate.
MacDonough’s decisions are merely advisory, but several Democratic senators have indicated they would be reluctant to overrule her.
The decision was initially described by a person informed about the ruling who would speak only on condition of anonymity. It was subsequently acknowledged by Senate Democratic leaders.
Democrats had pitched MacDonough on a proposal that would establish a pathway to citizenship for participants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as Dreamers, and three other groups: certain people with temporary protected status, farmworkers and essential workers.
In a closed meeting earlier this month, Democrats argued the proposal was a budgetary issue because providing citizenship would cost the government about $140 billion over 10 years as new U.S. citizens became eligible for benefits, such as Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
Republicans countered that the immigration provisions were social policy with only a small impact on the budget.
Estimates vary because people can be in more than one category, but the liberal Center for American Progress has estimated that 6 million people could be helped by the Democratic effort. Biden had proposed a broader drive that would have affected 11 million migrants.
White House spokesperson Vedant Patel called the parliamentarian’s decision disappointing but said Senate negotiators would offer new immigration alternatives.
“We are deeply disappointed in this decision but the fight to provide lawful status for immigrants in budget reconciliation continues,” Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a written statement. “Senate Democrats have prepared alternate proposals and will be holding additional meetings with the Senate parliamentarian in the coming days.”
“What we know is true: A path to permanent residency and citizenship has a significant budgetary impact, great bipartisan support, and above all it is critical to America’s recovery,” said Kerri Talbot, deputy director of the Immigration Hub, a group of pro-immigration strategists. “We will continue to work with members of Congress to ensure that millions of undocumented immigrants can have lasting protections.”
Republicans have already signaled that they will use immigration as a top issue in next year’s campaigns for control of the House and Senate. The issue has gained attention in a year when huge numbers of migrants have been encountered trying to cross the Southwest border.
“Democratic leaders refused to resist their progressive base and stand up for the rule of law, even though our border has never been less secure,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. He said putting the provisions into a filibuster-protected budget measure was “inappropriate, and I’m glad it failed.”
The Senate Budget Committee’s top Republican, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said shielding the immigration provisions from filibuster “would be a disaster. It would have led to an increased run on the border — beyond the chaos we already have there today.”
One alternative that advocates have said they’re exploring would be to update a “registry” date that allows some migrants who are in the U.S. by that time to become permanent residents if they meet certain conditions. But it was unclear if they would pursue that option or how the parliamentarian would rule.
The provisions that MacDonough said should be removed would create varying, multiyear processes for migrants to gain legal permanent residence, which in turn would allow many of them to pursue citizenship.
Under the reconciliation process, language in such legislation is considered “extraneous” and is supposed to be removed if its budget impact is “merely incidental” to the provision’s overall policies.
MacDonough said the budget impact of the Democrats’ immigration proposal was outweighed by the policy impact it would have. Democrats have said that according to an unreleased estimate by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the immigration provisions would have increased federal deficits by more than $130 billion over the coming decade, largely because of federal benefits the migrants would qualify for.
“The reasons that people risk their lives to come to this country — to escape religious and political persecution, famine, war, unspeakable violence and lack of opportunity in their home countries — cannot be measured in federal dollars,” the parliamentarian wrote.
She argued that “changing the law to clear the way” to legal status for millions of people living in the country illegally is a “tremendous and enduring policy change that dwarfs its budgetary impact.”
The parliamentarian also warned that if Democrats were allowed to extend citizenship with only 50 votes, then it could later be revoked by the same threshold.
“That would be a stunning development but a logical outgrowth of permitting this proposed change in reconciliation and is further evidence that the policy changes of this proposal far outweigh the budgetary impact scored to it and it is not appropriate for inclusion in reconciliation,” she wrote.
The parliamentarian’s ruling added to the uncertainty at a time when Democratic leaders will need virtually every vote from their members in Congress to approve a 10-year bill that embodies Biden’s top domestic goals.
The $3.5 trillion bill would boost spending for social safety net, environmental and other programs and would largely finance the initiatives with tax increases on the wealthy and on corporations.
Party leaders are still working to find a compromise on the legislation that would satisfy virtually every Democrat in Congress. They can’t lose any Democratic votes in the 50-50 Senate and can lose no more than three in the House.
Democrats and a handful of GOP allies have made halting progress during the past two decades toward legislation that would help millions of migrants gain permanent legal status in the U.S. Ultimately, they’ve been thwarted each time by broad Republican opposition.
The House has approved separate bills this year to address that goal, but the measures have gone nowhere in the Senate because of Republican filibusters.
MacDonough was appointed to her post in 2012 when Democrats controlled the chamber and is respected as an even-handed arbiter of Senate rules.
White House spokesperson Vedant Patel called the parliamentarian’s decision disappointing but said Senate negotiators would offer new immigration alternatives.