Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who has already made political hay attacking defense secretary nominee Chuck Hagel, accused President Obama of trying to derail immigration reform in a speech Wednesday.
“I don’t believe President Obama wants an immigration bill to pass, instead I think he wants a political issue,” Cruz said at a speech in Texas, the Dallas Morning News reported. “His objective is to push so much on the table that he forces Republicans walk away from the table because then he wants to use that issue in 2014 and 2016 as a divisive wedge issue.”
Cruz added that Obama’s call for a path to citizenship for the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants is over the line and “designed to scuttle the bill.”
The White House has been engaged in a political fight with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who is part of a group of bipartisan senators working on immigration reform. Rubio over the weekend called a draft of the White House’s immigration bill “dead on arrival.” Since the spat started, President Obama has called Rubio and other Republican senators in an effort to defuse the flare-up.
