US News

Keep gays off immig bill: GOP

WASHINGTON — Just a day after President Obama flew to Las Vegas to make a push for immigration reform, Republicans working out a bipartisan plan slammed the White House for an overreach that could kill the prospects for a new law.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a key negotiator on a failed immigration plan during the Bush administration, yesterday warned that Obama could sink immigration reform by including provisions that provide gays with the right to bring their long-term partners under an expanded “path to citizenship.”

“If you are going to load it up with social issues, that is the best way to derail it,” McCain told a Politico breakfast yesterday.

Fellow negotiator Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was even more blunt. “Why don’t we just put legalized abortion in there and round it all out?” Graham sarcastically told reporters.

Meanwhile in the House, conservative Republicans are griping about the amnesty proposal and have even started their own committee behind closed doors to craft an entirely different plan, according to Politico.com.

But an optimistic Obama vowed to find consensus and said an agreement could be sealed within six months.

“I can guarantee that I will put everything I have behind it,” the president said in an interview with the Spanish-language TV network Telemundo.