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House Speaker John Boehner hammered the last nail into the coffin of the Senate immigration reform proposal on Wednesday. "We have no intention of ever going to conference on the Senate bill," he told reporters, according to NBC News. Weirdly, Republicans seem to see this as presenting an obstacle to President Obama, instead of to future Republicans.
On Tuesday, we looked at Obama's flustered attempts to get Congress to move forward on an immigration bill that would present a pathway to citizenship or legal status for those who are here without documentation. The Senate passed its bill in June by a wide margin. Since, the House hasn't done anything on the Senate proposal, repeatedly either shrugging at taking it up or laughing at the prospect.
Perhaps getting tired of the question, Boehner put his foot down. A conference committee discussion on the topic — similar to the on-going negotiations over the Farm Bill and the budget — could have helped the two chambers reach consensus on something that could be signed into law. NBC explains why that won't happen:
[S]ome conservatives had been pushing against House passage of any immigration legislation, arguing that Senate Democrats would use the conference to inject more liberal policies and then force Republicans in the House to stomach changes they say are unfair to those who came to the country legally.
And so Boehner on Wednesday: "no intention of ever going to conference on the Senate bill." House members have been working on piecemeal approaches to the issue, but Boehner also declined to indicate whether or not any of those would come up for a vote.