Jonathan Strong reveals that Speaker Boehner may not apply the Hastert rule to any vote on a House-Senate conference report on immigration:
At a press conference following the GOP meeting, Boehner said he “suggested to our members today that any immigration-reform bill that is going to go into law ought to have a majority of both parties’ support if we’re serious about making that happen. So I don’t see any way of bringing an immigration bill to the floor that doesn’t have the majority support of Republicans.”This means, of course, that the House could vote for a pro-enforcement measure only to have it go to conference with something like S. 744. Boehner seems to be suggesting here that he could override the will of a majority of Republicans by teaming up with Democrats to pass a "comprehensive" legalization bill if it came out of conference.
When I asked him if the commitment to garnering the support of a majority of Republicans extended to any conference report on immigration, Boehner said, “We’ll see when we get there.”
