McConnell Seeks Deals With Democrats on Immigration, Spending

(Bloomberg) -- Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday he hopes to reach what so far have been elusive bipartisan breakthroughs on immigration, infrastructure and budget caps.

“It’s time to act” on immigration, he told reporters. “It’s long past due for us to sit down in a bipartisan basis and try to fix as much of this problem as we can.”

The situation on the U.S.-Mexico border “can’t be solved without legislation because the current asylum laws aren’t working out well, given the vast number of people who are coming here and seeking asylum,” the majority leader added.

McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, didn’t rule out including Democratic priorities such as language addressing young undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and are known as dreamers.

“That’s what a negotiation produces, some kind of an understanding about how many of these different issues you can get enough agreement to solve,” he said.

Clashes over immigration and and the border have prompted two government shutdowns during President Donald Trump’s tenure.

After Trump pushed out key leaders at the Department of Homeland Security, top White House officials started a new round of talks with some senior Senate Democrats on Wednesday, but there is no clear resolution in sight.

Until now, McConnell has shown little interest in reigniting a debate over immigration policy in his chamber. The Senate in February 2018 rejected an immigration overhaul backed by the White House as well as a bipartisan compromise Trump opposed that would have financed border security and given many young undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship.

‘Credible Pay-For’

McConnell said he also hopes to pass an infrastructure package, but he said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Trump need to agree on how to pay for it first.

“The key to it is for the president, the only person in America who can sign something into law, and the Democratic speaker of the House to reach an agreement on a credible pay-for,” McConnell said. “Otherwise, it’s just talk.”

Congressional Democrats are laying the groundwork for a broad infrastructure package that Pelosi says could seek as much as $2 trillion in new investment for the nation’s roads and bridges. The plan could get a House vote this summer, several House Democrats said during an annual policy retreat in Leesburg, Virginia.

“It has to be at least $1 trillion,” Pelosi said. “I would like it to be closer to $2 trillion.”

Pelosi said the method of paying for the bill is still under discussion, while noting that government bonds have been used in the past. Progressive Democrats have floated a tax on high-frequency financial transactions as one way to fund the plan.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Thursday that he and Pelosi plan to meet with Trump after a two-week Easter recess to talk about infrastructure. He declined to say whether he would endorse any particular funding approach, such as increasing the federal gasoline tax.

McConnell, whose wife, Elaine Chao, is Transportation secretary, said no one has come up with a credible way to pay for an infrastructure plan yet. “All I would rule out is what we did in 2009, which is to go out and borrow $900 billion,” he said, referring to the economic stimulus legislation passed under President Barack Obama.

McConnell said separately that talks have begun among his staff, Pelosi’s staff and the White House on a two-year deal on budget caps to clear a path for appropriations. Congress also must increase the debt limit later this year. McConnell said he’s still working to pass disaster relief, which has been mired in a dispute over how much to spend on Puerto Rico.

Firewall Against Socialism

McConnell also said he intends to be “on offense” in 2020’s Senate races, and that the ideas of progressive Democrats running for president provide easy fodder.

“We’re running to be the firewall to save the country from socialism,” he said. “You add up things like packing the Supreme Court, getting rid of the Electoral College, the Green New Deal and Medicare for None, and you have a prescription for turning America into something it never has been and never should be.”

He said Republicans lost the House in 2018 because they lost college-educated voters “for the first time in my memory” and women, particularly in the suburbs. “That is not a path to political success,” he said.

He added that the growing economy is helpful, but the elections won’t turn so much on that as it will the “deficiencies” of either party.

“There are not a whole lot of voters who cast gratitude votes,” he said. “Generally, they’re looking for what the deficiencies are in one side or another. And what we’re seeing in the Democratic presidential primaries gives us a sense of what we ought to be against going into 2020.”

--With assistance from Erik Wasson.

To contact the reporters on this story: Steven T. Dennis in Washington at sdennis17@bloomberg.net;Laura Litvan in Washington at llitvan@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Laurie Asséo, John Harney

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