Rep. Mark Walker Stumping For Speaker Paul Ryan on Dreamer Deal

WASHINGTON, D.C. – On Tuesday we brought you a story highlighting the dueling paths of two North Carolina congressman who lead competing Republican factions in the U.S. House of Representatives – Mark Meadows and Mark Walker.

While Walker has been staking out conservative positions as head of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), we noted that the Greensboro Republican began his congressional career by breaking a campaign promise and voting in favor of keeping Establishment House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH).

Reporting by the Huffington Post places Walker in the tutelage of another Establishment House Speaker, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). This time is appears Walker is working with Ryan to convince Republicans to include a path to amnesty for DACA recipients in an omnibus spending deal at the end of the year.

“House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) privately conceded to a group of House conservatives on Tuesday that he plans to include a legislative fix for undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children in a year-end spending deal.

[…]

“He did talk about the fact that that would be good if we could get ahead of that as opposed to being reactionary,” RSC Chairman Mark Walker (R-N.C.) told HuffPost Tuesday night.

When HuffPost asked Walker if Ryan had said Republicans didn’t have the votes to do something on DACA alone, and therefore needed Democratic support, Walker said, “It wasn’t as clear cut as that ― and it rarely is, actually ― but he did make reference that [DACA provisions] would be something that might be part of the whole ball of wax.””

So, on one hand Walker has been voicing conservative positions, against what is palatable to House leadership on issues like insurance company subsidies, but on the other hand he is shilling for leadership to place a path to amnesty for DACA in a larger spending bill because it could not survive on its own.

This is part of voters’ frustration with Washington; they are constantly forcing unpopular legislation through by attaching it to popular or must-have bills, like a spending deal. If a proposal can’t survive on its own, maybe you should get a clue?

““He did talk about border security,” Walker said of Ryan. “The language that I’ve used, when we did the poll in the RSC, 83 percent of the RSC members believe that a precursor of any kind of long-term DACA fix is securing the border. Now that could be defined different ways. I didn’t get any impression that Speaker Ryan has moved off of that position.”

But Walker conceded that enhanced border security didn’t necessarily mean “a wall.”

“I don’t think that anybody has said definitively that the wall has to be part of that,” Walker said.”

Well, Mark, nobody has said the wall should be part of border security measures, except, you know, the VOTERS. Not to mention President Trump got to the White House campaigning on ‘The Wall’ as part of border security.

How tone deaf do you have to be to think sneaking DACA deals into a spending bill, with out the accompanying border wall provisions, is a smart political move to endear yourself to the Republican base?

Walker’s conservative talking points maybe just that – talk. When it comes to action, Walker is evidently more likely to carry water for the Speaker and his Establishment causes than to make good on his re-branding of the RSC as a conservative caucus.

“When HuffPost asked Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) on Tuesday about Ryan potentially including DACA in a year-end spending deal, Yoho said “he better not.”

“You gotta get rid of DACA. DACA needs to go away,” Yoho said.

Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) also said it would be a “big problem” if Ryan included those immigration provisions in a December omnibus bill. “That’s true leadership, I guess,” Labrador said facetiously.””

That *true* leadership is being helped along by Walker as Ryan’s loyal lieutenant it seems, lobbying Republicans to vote for a bastardized deal that is typical of the D.C. Swamp.