After Trump shocked the political establishment by siding with the Democrat’s plans to only raise the debt ceiling for 3 months, vs the Republican plan of 18 months, the rank and file of the Democratic party are taking a more skeptical look at the political deal that their party’s leaders made with President Trump.
House Democrats are frustrated because that deal does not include funding to support illegal immigrants that came to this country under the DACA Amnesty plan (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). DACA was a cornerstone of Obama’s open borders agenda, which Trump recently announced would be shut down in a mere 6 months.
Interestingly enough, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi finalized the deal with President Trump this past Wednesday. The deal provides emergency aid to the victims of Hurricane Harvey and enhances government funding and borrowing powers through Dec 15th, but appears to kick the DACA debate until the end of this year.
The deal was not accepted widely and faced opposition both on and off Capitol Hill, who are still insist that Democrats are letting go of an opportunity to tap backlash against Trump’s decision to shut down DACA.
Rep. Grijalva, the Head of the Progressive Caucus explained, “There’s still a feeling amongst us … that the moment to try to do something is right now — try to force hands. … Because I really think the momentum, at least the public attention to it, is so high, I don’t know if you can sustain it all the way until December.”
Other Democrats were harsher, with Rep. Luis Gutierrez questioned the Democrat’s commitment to protect DACA, which had succeeded in granting temporary amnesty to a massive 800,000 illegal immigrants.
On Wednesday morning, in his passionate defense of the program, he said, “Democrats just don’t seem to want to use their leverage to protect the Dreamers. … That’s what the immigrant community is seeing through their lenses.”
He further added, “Please tell me the difference between a Republican Paul Ryan [saying], ‘I feel so sorry, I’m so sympathetic to their cause,’ and a Democrat saying, ‘I’m so sorry, I feel so sympathetic to their cause’ — when neither one of them does anything to resolve the problem,” Gutierrez said. “I’m asking you who’s throwing the life-vest? Who’s expending some political capital? Who’s writing the check so they can be free? Nobody.”
On the other hand the deal would help Democrats politically, it would force the Republicans to vote twice this year to raise the Debt ceiling – something that is very unpopular among the Congress’s conservative deficit hawks.
Hours before the Democrats made the deal public, Rep. Michele Lujan Grisham, the head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus said that there is “a growing movement” among the Democrats to push for the DACA language this month.
Gutierrez warned that the delay not only risks alienating Hispanics, it also has practical effects for the hundreds of thousands of DACA enrollees.
He said, “These 800,000 young people, you have upended their lives. I cannot think of the fear and the terror and the desperation that some of them are confronting. And they need to feel that they’re not alone … The Democratic Party has to stand for something. And today it lost an opportunity to stand with them.”
