Immigration Politics – Cal 2013 – Starter Packet

Political Capital High

Obama’s pushing

Kelley 6-12

[Caroline. Politics for Time. “Can Congress Vote On Immigration Reform Before Its Vacation?” TIME, 6/12/13 ln//GBS-JV]

The clock is ticking for immigration reform. On Tuesday, President Obama urged Congress to move quickly on the sweeping reform bill the Senate began debating this week. “There’s no reason Congress can’t get this done by the end of the summer,” he said. The president’s urgency was reminiscent of the way President George W. Bush pushed for his own immigration reform package in 2007. Six years ago this Wednesday, Bush visited Capitol Hill to “make a personal appeal” to Republican senators on behalf of his plan, which included a goal that they vote before Congress’s July 4 recess—the same target recently set for this year’s Senate reform effort by New York Democrat Chuck Schumer.¶ ¶ The Senate couldn’t deliver a vote by July 4 in 2007, however, and Bush’s bill eventually died in the doldrums of summer. Proponents of this year’s version hope for more success. But, they too face a calendar challenge. Norman J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, says that he “wouldn’t bet a great deal of money on meeting the July 4th deadline” this year.¶ ¶ A significant delay in the Senate could make it harder for the House to vote on immigration reform before Congress goes on vacation. The House is scheduled to be in session for just 16 days following the July 4 holiday before lawmakers begin their month-long vacation on August 5th. House Speaker John Boehner has said he hopes the House can vote before then.¶ ¶ Reform advocates worry that if a bill isn’t passed before August, opponents might marshal intense opposition to it in the media and at lawmakers’ town hall meetings, just as they did with Obama’s health care plan in the summer of 2009, which threatened to derail that bill. Ornstein thinks immigration reform could survive Congress’s recess, but that the delay would make passage more difficult.

He’s spending PC on immigration

Stanage 3-5

[Niall. Politics for the Hill. “New Obama Strategy: Take No Prisoners” The Hill, 3/5/13 ln//GBS-JV]

However, on immigration, the leak of details from a White House proposal first appeared to diminish the chances of progress. Obama quickly got immigration reform back on track by making phone calls to the leading Republicans on the issue, including Sens. John McCain (Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.). McCain and Graham were subsequently invited to a White House meeting last week. Afterward, Graham insisted that it was “one of the best meetings I ever had with the president.”¶ Tony Fratto, a former deputy press secretary for President George W. Bush, said that any evaluation of Obama’s second-term approach needs to acknowledge these nuances.¶ “I don’t think it’s some kind of second-term infusion of courage,” he said. “It’s very tactical in the way they deal with issues.”¶ Cal Jillson, a professor of political science at Southern Methodist University, offered a more generous analysis of Obama’s strategy.¶ “Where you can get Republican support, it makes no sense at all not to take it,” he said. “But if you can’t give them half a loaf and get a significant number of votes in return, then why give them half a loaf in the first place?”¶ Democratic strategist Doug Thornell, meanwhile, offered a simpler explanation for Obama’s approach: Time is short.¶ “He’s more than halfway through his presidency now, and it’s become apparent that Congress is totally dysfunctional,” he said. “And if he waits around for them to demonstrate leadership, we’ll be waiting forever.”¶ The president is once again, it seems, feeling the fierce urgency of now.

AT//PC Fails / Hirsh

PC is real and it works – congress wants compromise and progress – pref our ev because its newer and speaks to congressional sentiment

Roarty ‘13

[Alex. Politics for the National Journal and the Atlantic. “There's Reason to Be Optimistic About Congress—Seriously” The Atlantic, 2/21/13 ln//GBS-JV]

Nevertheless, this is a new congressional session, and Boren's pessimism might possibly be proved wrong. For the first time in a decade, if not longer, conditions are aligned for bipartisan deal-making, raising hopes that Congress might actually do something and satisfy the wishes of millions of Americans hungry for action. "I am pleased with the signs I see in Congress today to try to make deals," said Lee Hamilton, who was a veteran Democratic House member from Indiana. "There are threads of it -- it's not a fabric yet -- but there are threads, and that's encouraging."¶ In today's context, defining success is important -- and requires a healthy dose of both skepticism and pragmatism. There's little hope that this Congress can reverse the -- exacerbated by, among other things, powerful special interests and partisan media -- that has gripped Washington. The forces that drove Rep. Boren out of Congress remain potent, and the legislative atmosphere on Capitol Hill is still toxic. Instead of a long-term course correction, the question is whether Republican leaders in the House, President Obama, and Senate Democrats can facilitate a reprieve -- if only to show the public that the institution is still functional. Cutting a deal with the broad backing of both parties isn't a question so much of relieving those pressures as of learning to pass laws in spite of them. ¶ The makeup of the 113th Congress and the occupant of the White House make conditions riper for bipartisan legislation than at any time since President George W. Bush's first years in office. Since then, Washington has been in the grip of one of two dynamics: Either one party has held Congress and the presidency, or one party, possessing limited power, has had little interest in passing consequential legislation.¶ The latter was the case last session, when Republicans controlled only the House. In most cases, they used this chamber to approve legislation, such as Rep. Paul Ryan's eponymous budget, that helped define the party's agenda but had no chance of gaining approval in the Senate (much less withstanding a veto from the White House). They were trying to wait out a president whom they believed would be sent packing in 2013.¶ Democrats were in a similar position from 2007 to 2009, when they controlled Congress but wanted to wait out Bush's tenure. The lack of bipartisanship, of course, didn't prevent major legislation from becoming law over the past 10 years. But when Democrats controlled Washington and passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, or similarly empowered Republicans approved Medicare Part D in 2003, they didn't need the backing of the other party -- and by and large didn't get it.¶ This session is different. Neither party has unilateral control, and yet there is an appetite, in the first year of Obama's second term, to make a serious attempt to legislate. The last time Capitol Hill saw something similar came in 2001 and 2002. Republicans suddenly lost the Senate when Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont defected from the GOP in the early summer, but Congress still overwhelmingly approved the No Child Left Behind Act months later (although the first round of Bush's tax cuts passed with only a dozen or so Democrats on board in each chamber). Later, the parties worked together to approve a slew of national security issues after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.¶ But drawing comparisons to that period is difficult because of 9/11; and, besides, most of Bush's term is hardly associated with bipartisan comity. The better parallel -- and the experience current optimists point to -- is 1996 and 1997, which bridges the end of President Clinton's first term and the beginning of his second. That two-year span saw agreements on a series of important issues, ranging from two big-ticket items (welfare reform and a balanced-budget agreement) to lesser-known achievements (such as raising the minimum wage). The similarity between that period and now extends beyond the split control of government. Only a year earlier, Republicans had ridden the "revolution" of 1994 into control of Congress, when they promised to push their agenda whether Clinton approved or not. But the party ultimately dealt with political setbacks, none more damaging than the government shutdown of 1996. The public blamed Republicans, and afterward Clinton never again trailed GOP presidential nominee Bob Dole (who was Senate majority leader at the time of the shutdown) in a head-to-head matchup, according to preelection polls. Public opinion might once again be pulling against Republicans, burnt as they were by Obama's reelection and their unexpected losses in the Senate. In a January poll by The Wall Street Journal and NBC News, 49 percent of adults disapproved of the GOP -- and only 26 percent approved. It was the worst rating for Republicans since 2008. Just as the Republicans in Clinton's time decided their political survival depended on coming to the table, the GOP of today might do the same. "Republicans overplayed the government shutdown, and President Clinton won that battle," said Dan Glickman, a former House member who was Clinton's Agriculture secretary. "And, with that, he effectively used the bully pulpit to control the agenda. He gave a lot of cover for people to vote for him. It's not the only factor, but members of Congress are much [more] likely to support a president when the people at home are inclined to support the president."¶ How much Obama's broad popularity matters to most GOP House members is debatable. With many of the president's supporters packed into heavily Democratic urban districts, most Republicans represent safely red districts. (In November, Mitt Romney won 227 congressional districts, a majority, despite losing by 4 percentage points in the national vote.)¶ But Obama's standing could weigh more heavily on House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor than on their followers; Cantor has recently attempted to rebrand the party with a softer image. While their charges' interests are more parochial, they have the national party's image to worry about. Popular opinion could prod the two leaders to reach agreements with Obama, especially on emotional issues such as gun control and immigration. Or, at the very least, public pressure could work to ease the disagreements that make even basic government action difficult -- a factor that might have been at work when House Republicans engineered a three-month delay of the debt ceiling. "They're hearing the message outside the Beltway that 'we elected you people to make things work,'" said John Breaux, the former longtime Democratic senator from Louisiana.¶ The onus falls particularly hard on Boehner, whose struggles to control his conference are well documented. More than any other player in Washington, he will determine whether anything gets done this year. How he decides to proceed could rest on how frequently he's willing to leave conservative colleagues out in the cold and, consequently, how far he's willing to risk his speakership.¶ The good of the party, and not his seat of power, propelled Boehner's decision to bring the superstorm Sandy relief bill to a vote earlier this year, when it passed with just a minority of support from Republicans. That combination -- Democrats and the moderate wing of the House GOP -- is the pathway to enacting a sweeping set of bipartisan agreements.¶ A week after the storm vote, a large bipartisan majority passed a three-month extension of the debt ceiling. "It is hard to see this Congress being viewed as a bipartisan one, but we have seen a glimmer of light on the recent bipartisan vote to extend the debt ceiling," said Ron Bonjean, a onetime aide to the Republican leadership. Maintaining that momentum in the House won't be easy, and it could require Obama's personal leadership. Getting Boehner to take such a perilous route could depend in large part on successful cajoling from the president. And on this subject -- the relationships among Washington's top leaders -- discussion of a deal being cut becomes sharply pessimistic.

Capital is specifically necessary to repair White House-Boehner relations

Roarty 2-21

[Alex. Politics for the National Journal and the Atlantic. “There's Reason to Be Optimistic About Congress—Seriously” The Atlantic, 2/21/13 ln//GBS-JV]

The disrepair of personal relationships in Washington plays only a minor role in the absence of party comity. But more so than other long-term factors, this is something the current players can control. As legislators try to craft difficult bipartisan compromises, a willingness to cross party lines, even at the risk of criticism from colleagues, is crucial. It's why Republican Sen. Marco Rubio's inclination to work with Democrats on immigration reform or Democratic Rep. Ron Wyden's collaboration with Ryan on health care were so widely praised; such efforts attract positive attention because they are so rare.¶ Political enemies have worked together for the common good before. Boehner and the late Sen. Edward Kennedy collaborated on No Child Left Behind. And Gingrich got along famously with Clinton, Breaux said, because the two men respected each other. "Even when he was trying to impeach [Clinton], they were still able to overcome that and get things done," Breaux said. He added: "I think that lack of personal relationships in the legislative body is absolutely the most harmful thing, exceeding any philosophical differences. It can overcome stringent disagreements."¶ Hill Democrats are openly encouraging Obama, whom they saw as failing to reach out during his first term, to rebuild those relationships. "What kind of commitment from the White House will there be to work the Congress aggressively, daily and continuously?" wondered Glickman, who is now a senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center. "It can be painful to do that, because presidents don't like that part of the job. I'm not sure this president likes it either."

Previous immigration pushes failed because Obama spent too much PC on other issues and couldn’t arm-twist the GOP effectively---their ev doesn’t account for the GOP’s tendency toward intransigence which makes PC true in the context of immigration

Hutchinson 2-1

[Earl. Political Analyst for New America and host of the Hutchinson Report. “No Risk for President Obama in Immigration Reform Fight” 2/1/13 The Huffington Post, ln]

But Obama even as his popularity numbers slightly fell among Latinos did not totally ignore the issue. He lashed the GOP for torpedoing comprehensive immigration reform legislation in Congress on the two occasions when it appeared that an immigration bill might be reintroduced.¶ Obama was not to blame that this didn't happen. The crushing problems and bruising fights over deficit reduction, spending, health care reform, coupled with high soaring gas prices and the jobless crisis were endless and time consuming. The fights required every bit of his political capital and arm twisting to make any headway against an obstructionist, intransigent and petty GOP determined to make him pay a steep political price for every inch of legislative ground he sought to gain.¶ The 2012 election changed only one thing with the GOP. That was its in your face, xenophobic rants against illegals supposedly stealing jobs from Americans and breaking the law. GOP leaders had no choice but to tamp down their saber rattle immigration rhetoric for the simple fact that Latino voters punished the party mightily in 2012 for that rhetoric, and sent an even stronger signal that it would continue to punish the GOP if it didn't change at least its tone on immigration. The 2012 election changed one other thing. It gave Obama the long sought and awaited opening he needed to go full throttle on immigration reform. ¶ The election result was not the only strong point for Obama on reform. In 2007, then President George W. Bush was widely and unfairly blamed for making a mess of the immigration reform fight in Congress by not pushing hard enough for passage of the bill. Immigrant rights groups lambasted Republican senators for piling crippling demands for tight amnesty, citizenship and border security provisions in the bill. Leading Republican presidential contenders didn't help matters by flatly opposing the bill as much too soft on amnesty and border enforcement. ¶ This did much to kill whatever flickering hope there was for the bill's passage. This undid the inroads that Bush made in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections when he scored big with Latino voters. A big part of that then was due to the perception (and reality) that Bush would push hard for immigration reform. But the GOP didn't learn a thing from this. It was almost as if Bush's Latino vote ramp up was an aberration. The GOP's metallic ear on immigration culminated in the idiotic quip from GOP presidential loser Mitt Romney that the best way to solve the immigration crisis was for undocumented workers to "self-deport." ¶ Obama's battle for the Latino vote in 2012 was never intended to head off any mass defection of Latino voters to the GOP. There was never any chance of that. The polls that showed Latinos less than enthusiastic about Obama also showed absolutely no enthusiasm for any GOP would-be presidential candidate, let alone that there would be a massive vote for GOP candidates. ¶ Still, Obama's frontal challenge to the GOP to do something about immigration reform is not only a long overdue move to right a long simmering policy wrong, but a move that if handled right can do much to shove the wrenching issue of what to do about the nation's millions that are here without papers, and are here to stay, off the nation's political table. There's absolutely no risk, only gain, for Obama in taking the point on immigration reform to try and make that happen.

Hirsh’s arg is just that PC can’t set the agenda. Our uniqueness evidence proves immigration’s already at the top of the docket, which is where Obama’s persuasive powers are vital.

Bernstein 1-28

[Jonathan Bernstein. Assistant Professor of Political Science at UTSA, 1/28/13, “On immigration, Obama should opt for a persuasive vagueness,” http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2013/01/28/on-immigration-obama-should-opt-for-a-persuasive-vagueness/]

Ezra Klein made an excellent point about Barack Obama and immigration reform today:¶ Republicans will fight most anything Obama proposes…This is a frustrating fact of life for the Obama administration — and perhaps even a sick commentary on how our political system works — but it is, nevertheless, a fact: Their involvement polarizes issues. And it’s not unique to them: Presidential involvement in general polarizes issues. By staying out, at least for now, the Obama administration is making it easier for Republicans to stay in.¶ The political scientist Richard Neustadt said that the power of the presidency really just meant the power to persuade. But by that he didn’t really mean winning debate-style arguments. Yes, that can happen, but usually presidents persuade by bargaining — by capitalizing on all the things presidents can do to convince others that they should do what the president wants them to do.¶ In this instance, if Klein is correct — and I’m pretty sure he is — the way for Obama to “persuade” is to be as vague about the new bipartisan Senate proposal as he can, at least in public. At the same time, the White House may need to push for specific provisions behind the scenes.¶ And the dance is probably more complicated than that, because it’s not just presidents who polarize, after all. A full-throated embrace of the bipartisan deal by the “usual suspect” liberal groups could easy scare off Republican support; on the other hand, if they oppose the deal, it could make it hard for mainstream liberals to support it. Assuming that the administration both wants the bipartisan package to be the basis for a bill that passes — but that the president also has preferences on details that are up for grabs — he may have strong preferences on how liberal groups react. And yet the president cannot force them to do what he wants; he can only, yes, persuade them. In doing so, he may call upon whatever trust they have in their past history together, or he may be bargaining with them. After all, each group involved has other things they want from the Obama Administration.¶ All of which is only to say that the correct steps for the president are usually difficult to find. The president needs the cooperation of all sorts of people (not just Members of Congress) who don’t have to do what he wants; then again, no one else in the American political system has more potential ways to influence (“persuade”) others. And from the outside, not only is it sometimes hard to know what the president should be doing to persuade — but it’s not even always obvious who needs persuading (Members of Congress? Which ones? Interest groups? Again, which ones? Parts of the bureaucracy?).

Issues tradeoff for Obama – if the thesis of the link is true, it precludes action of immigration

Walsh ‘12

[Ken covers the White House and politics for U.S. News. “Setting Clear Priorities Will Be Key for Obama,” 12/20, http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/Ken-Walshs-Washington/2012/12/20/setting-clear-priorities-will-be-key-for-obama]

And there is an axiom in Washington: Congress, the bureaucracy, the media, and other power centers can do justice to only one or two issues at a time. Phil Schiliro, Obama's former liaison to Congress, said Obama has "always had a personal commitment" to gun control, for example.¶ But Schiliro told the New York Times, "Given the crisis he faced when he first took office, there's only so much capacity in the system to move his agenda." So Obama might be wise to limit his goals now and avoid overburdening the system, or he could face major setbacks that would limit his power and credibility for the remainder of his presidency.

PC’s real – best scholarship

Beckman and Kumar ‘11

[Matthew N. Beckmann and Vimal Kumar 11, Profs Department of Political Science, @ University of California Irvine "How Presidents Push, When Presidents Win" Journal of Theoretical Politics 2011 23: 3 SAGE]

Before developing presidents’ lobbying options for building winning coalitions on Capitol Hill, it is instructive to consider cases where the president has no political capital and no viable lobbying options. In such circumstances of imposed passivity (beyond offering a proposal), a president’s fate is clear: his proposals are subject to pivotal voters’ preferences. So if a president lacking political capital proposes to change some far-off status quo, that is, one on the opposite side of the median or otherwise pivotal voter, a (Condorcet) winner always exists, and it coincides with the pivot’s predisposition (Brady and Volden, 1998; Krehbiel, 1998) (see also Black (1948) and Downs (1957)). Considering that there tends to be substantial ideological distance between presidents and pivotal voters, positive presidential influence without lobbying, then, is not much influence at all.¶ As with all lobbyists, presidents looking to push legislation must do so indirectly by pushing the lawmakers whom they need to pass it. Or, as Richard Nesustadt artfully explained:¶ The essence of a President’s persuasive task, with congressmen and everybody else, is to induce them to believe that what he wants of them is what their own appraisal of their own responsibilities requires them to do in their interest, not his…Persuasion deals in the coin of self-interest with men who have some freedom to reject what they find counterfeit. (Neustadt, 1990: 40) ¶ Fortunately for contemporary presidents, today’s White House affords its occupants an unrivaled supply of persuasive carrots and sticks. Beyond the office’s unique visibility and prestige, among both citizens and their representatives in Congress, presidents may also sway lawmakers by using their discretion in budgeting and/or rulemaking, unique fundraising and campaigning capacity, control over executive and judicial nominations, veto power, or numerous other options under the chief executive’s control. Plainly, when it comes to the arm-twisting, brow-beating, and horse-trading that so often characterizes legislative battles, modern presidents are uniquely well equipped for the fight. In the following we employ the omnibus concept of ‘presidential political capital’ to capture this conception of presidents’ positive power as persuasive bargaining.¶ Specifi- cally, we define presidents’ political capital as the class of tactics White House officials employ to induce changes in lawmakers’ behavior.¶ Importantly, this conception of presidents’ positive power as persuasive bargaining not only meshes with previous scholarship on lobbying (see, e.g., Austen-Smith and Wright (1994), Groseclose and Snyder (1996), Krehbiel (1998: ch. 7), and Snyder (1991)), but also presidential practice. For example, Goodwin recounts how President Lyndon Johnson routinely allocated ‘rewards’ to ‘cooperative’ members:¶ The rewards themselves (and the withholding of rewards) . . . might be something as unobtrusive as receiving an invitation to join the President in a walk around the White House grounds, knowing that pictures of the event would be sent to hometown newspapers . . . [or something as pointed as] public works projects, military bases, educational research grants, poverty projects, appointments of local men to national commissions, the granting of pardons, and more. (Goodwin, 1991: 237) Of course, presidential political capital is a scarce commodity with a floating value. Even a favorably situated president enjoys only a finite supply of political capital; he can only promise or pressure so much. What is more, this capital ebbs and flows as realities and/or perceptions change. So, similarly to Edwards (1989), we believe presidents’ bargaining resources cannot fundamentally alter legislators’ predispositions, but rather operate ‘at the margins’ of US lawmaking, however important those margins may be (see also Bond and Fleisher (1990), Peterson (1990), Kingdon (1989), Jones (1994), and Rudalevige (2002)). Indeed, our aim is to explicate those margins and show how presidents may systematically influence them.