President Joe Biden used his White House press conference to suggest Democrats break up the Build Back Better (BBB) legislation — and pointedly declined to describe the bill’s amnesty and migration-expansion sections as priorities.
“It’s clear to me that we’re going to have to probably break it up,” Biden said, adding:
I’ve been talking to a number of my colleagues on the Hill. I think it’s clear that we would be able to get support for the $500-plus billion dollars for energy and the environmental issues that are there … I know that the two people who opposed [the legislation] on the Democratic side support a number of things that are in there. For example, [Sen.] Joe Manchin strongly supports early education, [for kids] three and four years of age, strongly supports it. There is strong support for a number of the ways in which to pay for this proposal.
“I think we can break the package up, get as much as we can now, and come back and fight for the rest later,” he said.
No reporters from Fortune 500 new organizations asked about immigration, even though the issue elected Donald Trump to the White House in 2016.
Biden’s huge BBB bill hides several huge immigration measures — but those unpopular measures would be exposed to public scrutiny if the bill is fragmented into small portions.
The bill includes an amnesty for millions of resident illegal migrants without creating protections against future migration.
It includes a short section that would dramatically accelerate the inflow of chain migrants — so spiking house prices.
The bill also includes a short section that would allow Fortune 500 companies to hire myriad compliant foreign graduates with offers of green cards, so allowing CEOs to stop hiring many trained American graduates.
The bill — and the hidden immigration changes — is being blocked by the closed-door opposition of a few Democratic Senators and the unified opposition of GOP Senators.
Biden did mention the migration issue, but only in passing as he complained that the GOP leaders in the Senate, Sen. Mitch McConnell, has refused to help pass legislation:
I think that the fundamental question is; What’s Mitch for? What’s he for on immigration? … What’s he for on dealing with Russia? … I’ve laid out the proposal on immigration that if we passed, we’d be in a totally different place right now. We’re not there because we don’t have a single Republican vote. My buddy Sen. John McCain is gone.
Republicans are not cooperating with Biden because they’re afraid of the GOP base, he said:
I’ve had five Republican Senators talk to me, bump into me, quote unquote, who have told me they agree with whatever I’m talking about. [They said] “But Joe, if I do [work with you] I’ll get defeated in the primary.”
We’ve got to break that. It’s got to change … Did any of you think that you get to a point where not a single Republican diverges [from the party] on a major issue?
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