John Boehner blasts Obama’s ‘lack of leadership’ on border

House Speaker John Boehner warned Tuesday that efforts to fix the border crisis are in jeopardy, blaming President Obama for bowing to the whims of fellow Democrats and failing to seek a bipartisan solution.

“The lack of leadership from this White House, and President Obama’s refusal to stand up to critics in his own political party, are jeopardizing our ability to find common ground and help the kids who are caught in the middle of this crisis,” said Mr. Boehner, Ohio Republican.

He pointed to Mr. Obama’s reversal on seeking changes to a 2008 law that delays deportations of children from Central America, the home country of most of the 57,000 illegal immigrant children that have poured so far this year across the U.S. border.

A House GOP task force set up by Mr. Boehner is expected to present proposals to address the crisis this week, while the House Appropriations Committee is working on Mr. Obama’s request for $3.7 billion to deal with the surge of unaccompanied alien children.

“Republicans have made clear that we support efforts to take care of these children, return them safely to families in their home countries, and secure the border,” Mr. Boehner said.

Rank-and-file Republicans remain wary of spending more money on the immigration crisis without securing the border and changing the 2008 law to speed up the return of the children to their homes in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

“In order to resolve this crisis in a timely manner, however, the White House must engage both parties on constructive solutions. After first supporting common-sense changes to the 2008 law that is making it more difficult to resolve this crisis, the White House backpedaled and failed to include those changes in its formal request to Congress,” the speaker said.

“Meanwhile, many Democrats in Congress have reversed themselves and now say no changes to the 2008 law are acceptable,” he said. ” As I said last week, I don’t believe the American people will support sending more money to the border unless both parties work together to address these policies and actually solve this problem.”