Pawlenty: No immigration reform this year

Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.) said Wednesday he predicts Congress won’t get immigration reform done this year, and it will spill into 2015.

“I’m a supporter of rational and comprehensive immigration reform, but they’re not going to get it done this year, so it’s going to spill into 2015 unfortunately,” Pawlenty said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

Pawlenty ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.

On Tuesday, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) addressed the comments he made last week in which he mocked his GOP colleagues who are too afraid to take on reform.

{mosads}In a private meeting with Republicans, one member quoted Boehner saying there is no “secret conspiracy” to push immigration reform through the House. 

Boehner essentially walked back his remarks from last week.

“Here’s the attitude. ‘Ohhhh. Don’t make me do this. Ohhhh. This is too hard,’” Boehner said in his home district, mocking the rest of the GOP caucus on immigration reform. 

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), meanwhile, predicted on Monday that Congress will pass a comprehensive bill this year. 

“I want to let you in on a little secret. We are going to pass that bill and sign it into law this year,” he said at an event co-sponsored by the New York Daily News.

Schumer helped write the Senate immigration bill that passed the upper chamber last year, but House GOP leaders have refused to take up that version.

“We will have an immigration bill — it may not be exactly the Senate bill — on the floor of the House … We will come to an agreement. They will put that bill on the President’s desk for President Obama to sign into law,” Schumer added.