Facing a rebellion among their most conservative ranks, House Republicans were forced on Thursday to scuttle an emergency spending measure to address the surge of young Central American migrants at the southern border, in a major embarrassment to the new leadership team.
House Republicans, who have long called for strengthening security at the nation’s southern border, are now forced to head home for the five-week August recess with nothing to show for their efforts — something many Republicans fear will be an enormous political liability.
The blow to Speaker John A. Boehner and his new team — including Representatives Kevin McCarthy of California, the new majority leader, and Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the whip — ensures that no legislation to address what both Democrats and Republicans call an urgent humanitarian crisis will reach President Obama’s desk before the August break. The Senate was also unlikely to pass its own border bill on Thursday.
The failure of even the most modest of Republican border bills also underscored how the prospects of a broad immigration overhaul — which at the beginning of the 113th Congress looked as if it could be the only real legislative achievement of the session — have ground to a final crushing halt amid more than a year of congressional infighting and dysfunction. On the Senate side, Democrats were expected to face a similar blow, as they were unlikely to clear a final procedural hurdle on their $2.7 billion immigration bill.