Commentary: McConnell’s abuse of power demands a GOP revolt

On June 27, 2013, the Senate passed S. 744, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act. The measure passed 68-32, with 52 Democrats, 14 Republicans and two independents voting in favor.

It provided broad authority for reinforcing physical barriers on the southern border, authorized the Border Patrol to double in size (up to 40,000 agents), strengthened laws preventing employers from hiring illegal immigrants, strengthened protections against people overstaying their visa visit limitations, provided a pathway to citizenship under special circumstances for people in the country illegally and streamlined processes for handling immigrants and refugees. The law also required the Secretary of Homeland Security to submit a comprehensive Southern Border Security Strategy and Southern Border Fencing Strategy.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated the new law would have had a positive impact on the national economy and would have reduced the federal deficit by $178 billion by 2023 and by $700 billion by 2033.

The only reason S. 744 did not become law was that the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives at that time, John Boehner, refused to bring it to the floor of the House for a vote. According to Roll Call, the Republican caucus in the House was split on the measure, with a significant number of moderates willing to support it. But Boehner was having none of it, telling reporters, “Frankly, I’ll make clear we have no intention of ever going to conference on the Senate bill.”

Now, nearly six years later, a Republican president is demanding money for “slats” or “fencing” or “whatever you want to call it” and is holding hundreds of thousands of Americans hostage by shutting down the government in order to get his way. The House has passed measures to reopen the government, and the Republican Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has been refusing to bring those measures to the Senate floor for a vote for a full month. It is clear that there is enough bipartisan support to pass the legislation, and it is possible that there is even enough support to override a presidential veto.

Political parties are a necessary evil to enable the efficient operation of government. When one member of Congress can defy the will of a bipartisan majority of his own chamber, obstructing the passage of necessary legislation, something is wrong. Within the past six years, two Republican leaders have used the same procedural mechanism to stymie the will of a bipartisan majority in their respective chambers, thereby obstructing the passage of legislation that the country desperately needs.

In the short term, the remedy to this problem is for other members of Congress to reject it by opposing any member who adopts such an anti-democratic practice.

I call on Sen. Mitt Romney to rise to this challenge. He is perhaps the only Republican senator with the character and personal power to lead such a revolt against the majority leader. Romney was correct to call out the president for lies and dereliction of duty, but that is not enough. The senator must also call out his peers in the Senate who are willfully collaborating with the president and, in the process, doing grave damage to our republic.

Stephen Tryon, Salt Lake City, is a retired Army lieutenant colonel, a former executive at Overstock.com, the author of the book “Accountability Citizenship,” and the 2016 Democratic candidate for Utah’s 3rd Congressional District.