Today, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was on ABC’s “This Week” where he talked about the prospects for immigration reform in Congress this year. When host George Stephanopoulos asked if immigration reform will pass the Senate and pass the House, Reid said, “Well, it’s certainly going to pass the Senate. And it would be a bad day for our country and a bad day for the Republican Party if they continue standing in the way of this. So the answer is yes.”
ABC’s transcript of the interview can be found here. And, watch, thanks to Think Progress:
And, here’s Elise Foley’s report on the Reid interview:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) predicted in an interview with ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that Congress will pass comprehensive immigration reform, despite opposition in the Republican-led House.
“It’s certainly gonna pass the Senate,” Reid told host George Stephanopoulos of immigration reform. “And it would be a bad day for our country and a bad day for the Republican Party if they continue standing in the way of this. So the answer is yes.”
Reid previously said immigration reform is at the top of his priority list for the year, along with gun legislation. He lent his support last week to a bipartisan immigration framework announced by the “gang of eight” — four Republican senators, four Democratic senators — which would give a pathway to citizenship to undocumented immigrants after certain border security provisions are met and would streamline the legal immigration system.
He told Stephanopoulos that he expects the conversations to become much more difficult as lawmakers draft actual legislation, but that he is optimistic, alluding to the concern from many Republicans that they are alienating Latino voters by opposing immigration reform.
“I think things are looking really good,” Reid said. “They’re good-looking for a number of reasons. One, it’s the right thing to do. And number two, the Republicans can no longer stop this. They’ve tried it. It hasn’t worked. Look what they tried to do to me a couple years ago. Look what they tried to do with the president just this last time. And it just didn’t work.”
