Obama to Boehner: "You are irrelevant"

On June 27, 2013, the Senate approved the bi-partisan Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013. The bill will save many millions by offering a path to citizenship which will stop the wasteful deportation of most law abiding undocumented who contribute substantially to our economy. The bill was put together by the Obama Administration, Senators, business groups, labor unions, agricultural interests... and immigration advocates. Besides offering a path to citizenship, the bill will implement innovative temporary workers' programs, increase critically needed vises to skilled workers and create a nationwide employer eligibility verification program.

In the 505 days since, GOP House Speaker John Boehner has refused to even consider debating and taking a vote on the Senate bill for one simple reason: He knows this sensible, bi-partisan Senate bill will pass the House and become law. Boehner, and his Republican cabal of obstructionists, will never give President Obama an accomplishment regardless of how many billions it will save, how many families it will stop being shattered by senseless deportation, and how much refusal to address the immigration problem distracts America from solving other serious problems.

But tonight the president will bypass the House obstructionists and announce executive action which will implement some of the proposed law's benefits, especially the end of deportation of millions of law abiding undocumented residents. In so doing, President Obama will be invoking his executive powers to do public good, and to right a wrong being done to the millions of folks who are improving the American Dream for the rest of us while they seek it for themselves. One has to go back sixty-four years ago to President Truman's 1948 Executive Order 9981, which desegregated the military, to find presidential action as monumental.

And in taking the action the president will announce tonight, he will subliminally be saying to Speaker Boehner and his minions motivated solely by fear and loathing, "Mr. Speaker, you are irrelevant."