Daily Archives: March 31, 2021

In 2019, when more than two dozen Democrats were vying for the partys presidential nomination, they all seemed to agree on one thing: They opposed former President Donald Trumps draconian immigration policies. Beyond that, though, it got messy. One camp of more progressive Democrats, helmed by former San Antonio mayor and housing secretary Julin Castro, advocated for repealing a law that makes unauthorized border crossings a crime. Other candidates expressed unease with the idea, raising concerns about what that would mean for human traffickers or drug smugglers crossing the border.

But the fact that Democratic presidential candidates were discussing decriminalizing border crossings still represented a significant break. Over the years, Democrats have moved to the left on immigration, and Democratic voters now hold more progressive views on immigration than both their Republican equivalents and one-time Democratic Party leaders like former President Barack Obama. But as the 2019 presidential primary debate shows, theres still a lot of debate in the party on just how far left to go. Democratic strategists and immigration experts Ive talked to say its hard to understand why immigration remains such an issue for Democrats without first factoring in how the partys relationship to immigration has changed and what that has meant for competing factions within the party. Understanding these trends also helps explain why Democrats dont really campaign on immigration, and why this makes President Bidens decision about how to address the current increase of apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border an even more complicated situation for a party that doesnt want to risk its congressional majority next year.

Today, its easy to lump the Democrats into two camps: moderate and progressive. But it wasnt always so straightforward. Back in the 1980s and 90s, when the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. began to tick up, there were two main schools of thought in the Democratic Party regarding immigration: A civil rights wing aimed at advancing equal opportunity in housing, education and voting rights and, as such, was pro-immigration, and a dueling labor wing that was wary or even hostile toward immigrants whom they worried would replace union workers or undermine working conditions.

But immigration wasnt the polarizing issue it is today, so it wasnt a big talking point among Democrats. (The partys 1984 platform didnt even include a section on immigration.) Republicans, however, were talking about immigration more and started to push for stricter immigration measures, including building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. This, coupled with an effort to crack down on crime, created a dynamic where the GOP was perceived as the party that was tough on crime, while Democrats were depicted as soft on crime.

That changed for Democrats, though, with the election of President Bill Clinton, who ran on a pro-law enforcement platform and criticized his opponent, George H.W. Bush, for cutting local law enforcement aid during his tenure. (Clinton doubled down on this approach, later running on a reelection platform that said, We cannot tolerate illegal immigration and we must stop it.) And it was under Clinton that the law that in essence created the immigration enforcement system as we know it today was passed. The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act authorized greater resources for border enforcement, added penalties for undocumented immigrants who committed a crime in the U.S., and placed the onus on asylum seekers to provide the documentation needed to support their applications.

In many ways, Democrats decision to get tough on immigration was part of a larger effort to push tougher law enforcement policies. In this same period, Clinton also signed into law the 1996 welfare reform act, which he said would end welfare as we know it and made assistance far more temporary and dependent on employment. There was also the now-infamous 1994 crime bill, which accelerated mass incarceration in the U.S.

Cristobal Ramn, an independent immigration policy consultant, told me that Democrats have gradually moved on from these positions, but stressed how interconnected the laws from then were. The dominant political view, Ramn told me was, that deterrence was the only way to stop violations of the law, including the nations immigration laws. But these laws have left Democrats with an uncomfortable legacy, as they disproportionately affected and criminalized people of color.

In the early 2000s, though, a few things shifted in the Democratic Party. For starters, the share of the partys voters expressing concern about immigrants and refugees entering the U.S. dipped after the number of migrants entering the U.S. declined substantially. Plus, tough on crime policies were expensive and their impact was minimal.

As time went on, the older divides in the party fell away. While there were still some concerns among Democrats about the impact of immigration on the American worker, the pro-union wing of the party became more pro-immigrant after mounting pressure from other unions, in particular service-worker unions, many of whose members are Hispanic. The AFL-CIO also reversed its anti-immigrant positions, calling in 2000 for undocumented immigrants to be granted citizenship. Another major development during the latter part of this decade was an omnibus immigration reform bill Republicans pushed through Congress in 2006, which didnt become law, but would have emphasized border security and raised penalties for illegal immigration.

This is also when Republican and Democratic voters began to dramatically split on immigration, according to polling from the Pew Research Center. In the mid-2000s, the two parties were pretty close in their views. When asked in 2003 if immigrants make the country stronger, 47 percent of Democrats and people who lean Democratic and 46 percent of Republicans and people who lean Republicans agreed. Now, though, nearly 90 percent of Democrats feel that way compared to just 40 percent of Republicans.

But despite this seismic move to the left on immigration, there are still important divisions within the Democratic Party, many of which have roots in the partys past. The two major camps we see elected officials fall into today are the establishment, pro-immigrant wing, which tends to include moderate Democrats, including those who hail from purple districts and/or live along the U.S.-Mexico border and the progressive wing, which includes members who generally see the Democratic Party as too centrist and too cautious.

There is one thing both wings seem to be united on, though: advancing the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which lets undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children apply for renewable work permits and avoid deportation. Theres been some movement on this program as of late: All House Democrats plus nine Republicans voted in favor of the Dream and Promise Act, which would provide a path to citizenship for DACA recipients. (Its less clear how the bill will fare in the Senate.)

But thats about all the two wings have in common. The establishment, pro-immigrant wing of the party tends to approach immigration from a more economic-based lens, according to Veronica Vargas Stidvent, executive director of the University of Texas at Austins Center for Women in Law and former assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Labor. This wing is more likely to be more concerned about the impact of immigrants on the American worker and support limited deportation for certain immigrants (like those in the U.S. without documentation who have committed a crime).

Many elected officials who fall into this group are making tough political calculations. For some (think members like Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California liberal who has been pro-immigration crackdowns), the fact that they fall in this wing of the party is more a reflection of their moderate politics. But for other members hailing from districts that arent as Democratic, and from states where migrant influxes are more pronounced and Latino voters have shown some signs of moving toward the GOP the fact they fall in this wing is more a reflection of their political reality.

Those who live closest to the U.S.-Mexico border most directly experience the disruptions of unauthorized immigration. As a result, the politics around immigration are complicated. Many Texas Latinos, for example, embrace enforcement-minded views on immigration, even if they also empathize with the migrants. Democrats in this camp are unlikely to support broad overhauls of the immigration system for fear of being alienated from their constituencies. Going too far on immigration reform can also mean theyre depicted as supporting open borders, a phrase that has become a right-wing talking point.

Members of the progressive wing, meanwhile, do want a more humanitarian-based immigration system focused less on border enforcement. Many want to abolish or dramatically restructure U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement a rallying cry that became popular among some Democrats amid some of Trumps most stringent immigration policies and they want the federal government to stop deporting immigrants. They also want to broaden immigrants access to social safety net programs.

Democrats remain at odds over how best to move forward. Bidens approach has so far been to roll back what Trump did, but he is ultimately going to have to pick a side within his party or work toward some sort of compromise. That wont be easy, though, especially when it comes to handling the current issue at the border. For starters, hed likely need Republican support to get anything immigration-related passed (budget reconciliation might not be an option, given parliamentarian rules, unless immigration measures are tacked onto another bill) and the GOP doesnt look likely to cooperate with Democrats.

Plus, whatever action Biden does take risks angering one of the aforementioned wings of his party. If he moves too far left, he risks losing moderate voters, but at the same time, if he doesnt move left enough, he risks breaking his promise of a fair and humane immigration overhaul.

Immigration also presents a broader electoral challenge for Biden. While he gets high marks on his overall job as president, handling of the economy and COVID-19 pandemic, according to a mid-March CBS/YouGov poll, only 52 percent of U.S. adults approve of the way he is handling immigration, among the lowest of the issues YouGov polled.

Anytime you have competing factions, it can do one of two things: push people to the middle to find compromise or result in a stalemate, Stidvent said. And ultimately, as Stidvent cautioned, a Democratic Party that is divided on how best to handle immigration doesnt help either party. That said, it wouldnt be completely surprising if some of the more moderate Democrats did propose some type of compromise with Republicans. (House Democrats passed two bills earlier this year that would offer legal protections for millions of undocumented immigrants, including DACA recipients, and Senate Democrats, hamstrung by the filibuster, might have to find middle ground on Republicans demands for more border enforcement if they want their bills to get to Bidens desk.) But with the current makeup of Congress and the drastically opposing views on immigration reform both within and between the parties, any type of comprehensive immigration reform will be tricky.

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How Democrats Became Stuck On Immigration - FiveThirtyEight

Photographer: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg

Photographer: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg

A New York Democrat said he wont back any tax increases that President Joe Biden proposes to pay for infrastructure legislation unless there is also a repeal of the $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions.

No SALT, no deal, Representative Tom Suozzi said in a statement Monday. I am not going to support any change in the tax code unless there is a restoration of the SALT deduction.

Repealing the $10,000 cap on SALT write-offs, is a top priority for several members of Congress representing high-tax states including New York, New Jersey and California, who say that their voters have been hurt by the limits on the tax break.

Removing the cap, which would cost the federal government tax revenue, could become a key area of contention as Democrats seek to raise levies on corporations and the wealthy to pay for a bevy of infrastructure, health care and social programs. Republicans are set to oppose any tax hikes, and Democrats have only narrow control in both the House and Senate, so any dissent in their ranks could imperil legislation.

In addition to costing $88.7 billion a year -- revenue that some Democrats would like to direct elsewhere -- doing away with the SALT cap is a politically difficult issue for some members of Congress, because more than half the benefits flow to households earning more than $1 million a year, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.

Read More: Yellen Pledges to Work With Congress on Ways to Ease SALT Cap

However, the issue has support from key members of Congress and the Biden administration. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, also supports the effort. He sponsors the Senate companion to Suozzis legislation to repeal the cap. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen also told a congressional panel earlier this month that the SALT deduction limit causes disparate treatment among taxpayers and said she would work with lawmakers to resolve the issue.

The $10,000 limit on SALT deductions was instituted in President Donald Trumps 2017 tax overhaul and Democrats have repeatedly tried to repeal the change, but were blocked in a Republican-controlled Senate. Democrats are now considering the infrastructure legislation that Biden is set to unveil later this week as a possible vehicle to which the SALT provision could be attached.

Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal.

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Democrat Says He Will Oppose Any Biden Tax Plan Without SALT Fix - Bloomberg

In early March, House Democrats passed H.R.1, an enormous anti-corruption and voting rights reform bill also known as the For the People Act. H.R.1 also includes a major overhaul of campaign finance and redistricting laws. The bill will next face a vote in the Senate, where it has a tough road ahead despite the Democrats majority in that chamber.

H.R.1 and its Senate counterpart S.1 are, as the numbers suggest, Democrats first priority in Congress. This is the second time in two years that Democrats have introduced this sweeping democracy-reform bill it first passed the House in March 2019 but faced defeat in the Senate.

At nearly 800 pages, H.R.1 covers a lot of ground. Some key points, though, are instituting nonpartisan redistricting commissions to end partisan gerrymandering, creating a national system for automatic voter registration and adding transparency requirements for political advertising.

There is a stark partisan divide on the bill that would overhaul the U.S. voting system as we know it. Congressional Democrats, along with President Joe Biden, say the country needs federal intervention to stop Republicans from reinstating racist Jim Crow-style rules that make it more difficult for minorities to vote. Republicans, on the other hand, view H.R.1 as a power grab that would remove protections on the right to vote and take away states authority to maintain their own voting systems.

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With no support from Republicans, the bill has no chance of attracting the 60 votes in the Senate it would need to overcome a filibuster. That has led some Democrats including Minnesota Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith to advocate for abolishing the filibuster in order to pass the bill.

Republicans are not as gung-ho on the topic of filibuster reform: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said the result would be a scorched earth Senate, insinuating that by killing the filibuster, Democrats would release furies they can barely imagine.

The massive bill can generally be split into three categories: election integrity, expanding voting access and voting rights, and campaign finance reform.

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When it passed in the House, H.R.1 contained some provisions and legislation written by Minnesota representatives.

Rep. Dean Phillips authored five provisions in the package, including the Voter NOTICE Act, which fights disinformation, and the FIREWALL Act, which strengthens safeguards around online advertising.

REUTERS/Erin Scott

Rep. Ilhan Omar

Along with Virginias Sen. Mark Warner, Sen. Amy Klobuchar introduced the Honest Ads Act in response to Russian attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election. The act would improve disclosure requirements for online political advertisements and require digital platforms with at least 50 million monthly visitors to make public the communications between the platform and a person or group that spends over $500 on ads.

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Why Republicans say theyre against it

For Republicans, the Democratic bill represents a power grab that could centralize control of elections in all 50 states in Washington Democrats hands, according to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Other conservatives condemn the bill as a disastrous federal overreach, saying it will destroy the decentralized electoral system in favor of a nationalized standard approach to elections.

REUTERS/Leah Millis

Rep. Tom Emmer

At the state level, Republicans have passed legislation that restricts voter access. According to the Brennan Center, at least 33 states have already introduced or carried over 165 bills that re-tighten voting requirements. In Georgia, a state in the voting-rights spotlight after its amplified role in the 2020 Senate race, the Legislature recently passed the Election Integrity Act of 2021, which voting rights advocates have decried as a method of restricting voting access for minorities. Three voting rights groups have already signed a lawsuit challenging the new law.

Under current rules, the Senate needs 60 votes to end debate and pass legislation. This requires Democrats to have the support of at least 10 Republicans to advance bills in the current 50-50 Senate.

Thats because of the filibuster, made famous by movies like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. The filibuster used to necessitate that a senator speak on the chamber floor to block a bill for as long as they could keep standing and talking. But in the 1970s, the Senate changed its rules so that senators could trigger a filibuster simply by announcing they wanted to block a bill.

This rule change was meant to help the Senate run more efficiently, but as a result the filibuster became much easier to use and one of the largest obstacles to passing legislation

Some Democrats view abolishing the filibuster as the only way to pass the For the People Act in the closely divided Senate.

Minnesota Sens. Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar have both expressed their support for abolishing the filibuster, with Smith calling the filibuster undemocratic. Klobuchar said the likely death of the For the People Act in the Senate flipped her from a long-standing maybe to a yes.

I would get rid of the filibuster. I have favored filibuster reform for a long time and now especially for this critical election bill, Klobuchar told Mother Jones. As the chair of the Senate Rules Committee which oversees federal elections, Klobuchar has a lot riding on the For the People Act.

REUTERS/Hannah McKay

Sen. Amy Klobuchar

Creating a new Senate precedent, known colloquially as the nuclear option and more formally as reform by ruling, can happen with only a simple majority of senators. In 2013, after Senate Republicans continually filibustered former President Obamas nominations, Senate Democrats changed the baseline for overruling a filibuster on presidential nominations (except Supreme Court nominations) from a three-fifths majority to a simple majority. Then in 2017, Senate Republicans used this approach to reduce the number of votes needed to end debate on Supreme Court nominations in an effort to end debate on the nomination of Neil Gorsuch.

Not all Democrats are on board with abolishing the filibuster. West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin favors a more bipartisan approach to passing legislation. He told POLITICO, I want to make it very clear to everybody: Theres no way that I would vote to prevent the minority from having input into the process in the Senate. That means protecting the filibuster. It must be a process to get to that 60-vote threshold. Democrats need all 50 of their Senators to be on board for filibuster reform, so if Manchin or anyone else decides against reform, thats it.

MinnPost file photo by Briana Bierschbach

Sen. Tina Smith

Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock (D) said on CNNs State of the Union on Sunday that the For the People Act was a moral imperative for Democrats.

I think that we have to pass voting rights no matter what, Warnock said when asked if he thought the filibuster had to be eliminated to get the bill passed. The filibuster at the end of the day is about minority rights in the Senate this is a defining moment in the American nation and I think all of us have a role to play.

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What's in Democrats' big election-reform bill and why they might be willing to get rid of the filibuster in order to pass it - MinnPost

In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew discusses a package of changes to voting rules signed into law on Thursday by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, and compares them with other Republican proposals around the country that could make voting more difficult. The Georgia law contains a number of controversial provisions, including giving more authority over the state elections board to the state legislature (instead of the secretary of state) and banning volunteers from giving food or water to people waiting in line to vote.

The gang also looks at the challenges facing the Biden administration in dealing with the surge of migrants at the southern border and immigration reform more broadly. There does not appear to be a general consensus among Democrats about how to address immigration reform. And in the near term, the U.S. is seeing the largest increase in migrants at the southern border in 20 years, according to the secretary of Homeland Security.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the play button in the audio player above or bydownloading it in iTunes, theESPN Appor your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts,learn how to listen.

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast is recorded Mondays and Thursdays. Help new listeners discover the show byleaving us a rating and review on iTunes. Have a comment, question or suggestion for good polling vs. bad polling? Get in touch by email,on Twitteror in the comments.

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Politics Podcast: Democrats Are Struggling On Immigration Policy - FiveThirtyEight

When they passed a $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief bill this month, Democrats in Congress sped past their Republican opposition, using the budgetary reconciliation process to present a case study of what happens when they dont bend over backward for G.O.P. buy-in.

Today, as they began hearings on a major piece of voting rights legislation, Democrats were making a different calculation. The bill isnt eligible for reconciliation and is almost certain to meet gridlock in the Senate, given the threat of a filibuster from Republicans.

Few issues, if any, divide the country along partisan lines more than voting rights. The bill being debated, the For the People Act, passed the House on party lines with no Republicans voting for it. Knowing that getting 10 Republicans to join Democrats in overriding a filibuster is virtually impossible, Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, is putting Democrats on a collision course with the existential debate over the filibuster.

But at the hearing today, he relished the opportunity to drive home the divide between Democrats and Republicans on this issue. Today, in the 21st century, there is a concerted, nationwide effort to limit the rights of citizens to vote and to truly have a voice in their own government, Schumer said, later chanting, Shame! Shame! at Republican lawmakers.

Theres a poetic irony and also a perfect logic to the fact that a debate over the filibuster would come to a head over voting rights legislation. Not only because filibuster reform involves the Senate altering its own voting rules, but also because the most high-profile uses of the filibuster throughout history have often been in order to block civil rights.

Senator Raphael Warnock, a Georgia Democrat, in a recent speech on the Senate floor, succinctly tied the For the People Act to the filibuster debate. It is a contradiction to say we must protect minority rights in the Senate while refusing to protect minority rights in society, he said.

Pressure has been growing among Democratic insiders this week for changes to the filibuster. Senators have begun broadcasting their support for ending the practice, and a report in Axios published today quoted people close to President Biden saying he was ready to roll back the maneuver, although the White House has been publicly tight-lipped on the issue.

Just as Democratic senators were strident in their calls for federal voting rights laws today, Republicans were combative in their arguments against the bill. Some expressed outrage over the legislations proposal to end the mandatory 3-3 partisan split on the Federal Election Commission, a move that Democrats have said was necessary to promote reform.

This bill is designed to corrupt the election process permanently, and it is a brazen and shameless power grab by Democrats, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said.

Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, said that states simply are not engaging in trying to suppress voters whatsoever.

Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia, argued that the bill was trying to fix a voting system that didnt need fixing, a position that seemed to go against prominent Republican narratives that the 2020 election was supposedly tainted by voter fraud.

But Democrats see an opportunity to press their case for filibuster reform with the For the People Act, a sweeping bill that would establish core national voting rights standards and create independent, nonpartisan commissions to handle the congressional redistricting process.

State-level Republican lawmakers have proposed hundreds of bills this year that would tamp down voting rights, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, and the G.O.P. will control the redistricting process next year in many key swing states. Democrats in Congress are looking at this bill as an increasingly urgent bulwark against voting restrictions and gerrymandering that could perpetuate targeted disenfranchisement, tilting the balance of political power for years to come.

Of course, its not yet certain that Senate Democrats will even unify in support of the bill. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who votes against his party with some regularity, is the lone Democrat who didnt sponsor it, and he has yet to signal unequivocal support. If he does get behind it, he would have to work to roll back the filibuster as well (something that he and at least one other Democratic senator, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, havent yet gotten behind) in order to make that support mean anything.

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Voting Rights Bill Puts Democrats on a Crash Course With the Filibuster - The New York Times