Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) refusal to work with President Obama on immigration is “preposterous,” the White House said Monday.
Press secretary Josh Earnest called Ryan’s claim that he cannot trust the president on the issue “ironic,” given he helped write bipartisan immigration reform legislation in 2013 only to stand with House GOP leaders in Congress who refused to take up a bill.
{mosads}“It’s a little hard for him to make the claim that somehow the president hasn’t acted in good faith on immigration when Speaker Ryan actively thwarted a compromise he himself helped to broker,” Earnest said.
“And then for him to come back and claim it’s somebody else’s fault? It’s preposterous.”
During a round of Sunday talk show interviews, Ryan said there wouldn’t be any immigration reform legislation during the final year of Obama’s presidency.
“The president has proven himself untrustworthy on this issue, because he tried to unilaterally rewrite the law himself. Presidents don’t write laws. Congress does,” he said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” referring to Obama’s executive actions to loosen his deportation policies.
“The president’s proven himself to be untrustworthy on this issue.”
The issue has emerged as an early point of conflict between the White House and Ryan, who has worked to unite all factions of the Republican Party after infighting forced out his predecessor John Boehner (R-Ohio).
Ryan has made similar pledges about immigration in closed-door meetings with conservative lawmakers, who are concerned with his record on the issue.
“I understand he has some complicated politics to take care of in the House when it comes to significant fractures inside of his own conference. He knows best how to handle that,” Earnest said.
“But pandering to the extreme right wing of the Republican conference, including preposterous comments like that, has not served the party or the country very well.”