Obama to huddle with black caucus amid Netanyahu speech controversy

President Obama will meet Tuesday at the White House with members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), including freshman GOP Rep. Mia Love (Utah).

The meeting comes as top black leaders — including CBC Chairman G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) and Reps. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) and John Lewis (D-Ga.) — are vowing to skip a March 3 speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to protest an invitation they see as a slight to the president in the midst of high-stakes nuclear talks with Iran.

Love is currently the only Republican member of the CBC. Her office said Monday that she plans to attend Tuesday’s White House meeting.

{mosads}CBC members have been among the most ardent supporters of Obama, the nation’s first black president, but there have also been tense periods, when the group felt the White House wasn’t fighting hard enough for safety net programs, anti-poverty measures, and other initiatives beneficial to black and other minority communities.

Previewing Tuesday’s meeting, Butterfield recently acknowledged that the relationship between Obama and the CBC is “complicated.” But he was also quick to note Obama inherited a terrible economy, and he blamed Republicans for playing an obstructionist role, rather than working with the president to promote a recovery.

“There have been isolated disappointments with the White House,” Butterfield said last month in an interview with The Hill. “But generally speaking I think — and I think that the vast, the overwhelming, majority of CBC members feel — that this president has been unfairly isolated by the Republicans. And his legacy is going to be a good legacy.”

CBC leaders have hailed Obama’s recent executive actions on immigration and Cuba, and they’re hoping the president continues to act unilaterally on issues like criminal justice reform. The lawmakers have long promoted legislation to overhaul the justice system, but the push grew more pronounced in the wake of several incidents last year, when unarmed black men were killed at the hands of white police officers.

“I encourage him to use more of his executive authority, and I believe he will,” Butterfield said.

Still, he said the CBC would not adopt the strategy of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC), which went to the White House promoting a list of immigration reforms the group wanted Obama to install unilaterally — many of which the president adopted in November.

“We’re not quite at the point where we want to present a manifesto to the president. That’s not our mode of operation,” Butterfield said. “The CHC has their personality, and we have ours.”