President Obama on Tuesday said Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio is “running away” from his 2013 comprehensive immigration reform bill.
“You’ve got a candidate who sponsored a bill that I supported to finally solve the immigration problem, and he’s running away from it as fast as he can,” Obama said.
{mosads}Responding to questions about the GOP’s presidential candidates, Obama said they all hold extreme positions, though Donald Trump expresses them in “more interesting” ways.
“He may express strong anti-immigration sentiment, but you’ve heard that from the other candidates as well,” Obama said of Trump.
Rubio, a Florida senator, was part of the bipartisan Gang of Eight who sponsored the 2013 bill. It cleared the Senate, but was never brought up for a vote in the House.
Rubio’s participation in the immigration bill has made him a target of other GOP candidates. Rival Ted Cruz, also a senator, has referred to the bill as “the Rubio-Schumer Gang of Eight bill” and argued it called for amnesty.
Rubio said last week that the bill was “never intended to become law” but rather to be made “even better” by conservative members of the House.