Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., reiterated Thursday the issue of immigration will not be solved by "a 12-person gang" like the 2013 Gang of Eight that authored a previous immigration bill, Politico reports.
"I don't believe that what we're going to end up doing here can be a product of a gang," Rubio said. "There won't be a 12-person gang. What we do here cannot be a product of a group of people that come out of a room and say: 'This is a direction we're going.'"
He added "The difference between now and '13 is that there's a Republican in the White House and a Republican majority in the Senate," the senator said. "The 2013 bill was designed through the context of a Democratic Senate and a Democratic president. Now we have a Republican Senate, a Republican House, and a Republican president."
Although Rubio does not regret the Gang of Eight bill, he believes the political reality has shifted, and Congress does not have time to put together a bill written by a bipartisan group of senators.
"We don't have a lot of time here to get a result," Rubio said. "We have a 40-day period. We don't have a lot of time here for an extended back and forth. What we do now [needs to be] as narrow and as focused as possible. The bigger this bill is, the harder it will be to pass."