Last week, Heritage Foundation policy expert Derrick Morgan helped deter House congressional lawmakers from moving forward on a new comprehensive immigration law. Morgan’s argument, aimed at House Speaker John Boehner, was simple: you can’t trust President Obama.
The VP of Domestic and Economic Policy said in a video interview posted on The Foundry, a Heritage foundation policy blog, that “until President Obama carries out his responsibility to enforce existing immigration laws, conservatives in the House have no reason to trust him with any changes.”
On Sunday, Morgan told Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon that the Heritage Foundation has been arguing for a long time against the establishment of amnesty policy. Appearing on Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot channel 125, Morgan explained that new immigration laws would be “unfair, costly, and they wouldn’t work.”
According to Morgan, some lawmakers just want to do something on immigration reform, but they will have to trust that the president will enforce the law. Based on the president’s track record, Morgan said, he doesn’t deserve their trust.
Morgan enumerated to Bannon the reasons why he feels Obama is not trustworthy. First, Morgan cited that the president will press forward on the defeated DREAM Act on his own, saying that he had no intentions of enforcing the law regarding the accompanying deportations. Second, he said, “We have federal drug laws on the books, and the president said he’s not going to enforce them.” Third, Morgan pointed out that cap and trade restrictions were defeated but that Obama said he is going to use his executive powers to institute the very same policy. Finally, Morgan explained that with Obamacare the president has altered the laws by presidential decree and that he gave “unelected bureaucrats and departments you never heard of” the power to implement the laws and thousands of regulations.
Indeed, it appears that Morgan is getting some traction with his arguments. Last week, chief House Republican lawmaker John Boehner pronounced, “The American people, including many of my members, don’t trust that the reform that we’re talking about will be implemented as it was intended to be.” Mr. Boehner cited executive actions by the Obama administration that have changed or delayed the carrying out of the Affordable Care Act.
But Morgan assured Bannon and Breitbart News Sunday listeners that the fight over immigration policy is far from over. Reacting to Boehner’s comment that the immigration bill “will be difficult to pass,” the policy expert asserted, “I would love to be celebrating right now, but it’s time to re-double our efforts on this. I am not 100% convinced this thing has gone away.”
One encouraging sign, Morgan stated, is that The New York Times has admitted immigration reform efforts have been wounded. Moreover, efforts by Breitbart News Network and other new media outlets have been successful in pressuring establishment Republicans not to move forward on new immigration policy.