The Hill reports that support in the Senate is snowballing in favor of the comprehensive immigration reform bill. We’re talking in the 68-72 range. It’s a few days old, but Chris Cillizza has a whip count that shows where people stand. Despite Rand Paul moving firmly into the ‘no’ camp since then, the count has continued to improve. It now looks possible that all 54 Democrats will be supportive. There are only six totally committed and on-the-record opponents: Chuck Grassley of Iowa, David Vitter of Louisiana, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Mike Lee of Utah, Ted Cruz of Texas, and Rand Paul of Kentucky. There are another twelve senators in the ‘likely no’ camp. That places the upper limit at 82 votes, so we can see why some are predicting a number as high as seventy-two. Also helpful, Bill O’Reilly endorsed the bill on Thursday night.
What seems to have been decisive was the decision to accept an amendment introduced by Republican Senators John Hoeven of North Dakota and Bob Corker of Tennessee that will spend a whopping $38 billion on border agents and fence-building. In comparison Socialist Bernie Sander’s support was apparently obtained with a $1.5 billion youth jobs program. Alaska Senators Lisa Murkowski and Mark Begich were able to carve out some kind of exemption for foreign workers in the state’s fishing industry.
Opponents of reform are going to feel very isolated, especially now that the Senate has decided to spend a ludicrous amount of money on border security and the Congressional Budget Office has predicted that the bill will save $700 billion over the next two decades. Senator Schumer predicted that House inaction on the Senate bill would result in a million or more people marching in the DC streets, which is not a bad prediction.
Still, this is John Boehner we’re talking about here. He’s the guy who just brought the Farm Bill to the floor and watched his own party crush it.
What seems to have been decisive was the decision to accept an amendment introduced by Republican Senators John Hoeven of North Dakota and Bob Corker of Tennessee that will spend a whopping $38 billion on border agents and fence-building.
How many schools(and related expenses .. meaning books and stuff) could this provide? It’s just further proof why we really are becoming a 3rd world country.
Yeah, I know.
It’s stupid. It’s wasteful. It invites all kinds of corruption.
Yet, here we have a bill that saves $700 billion over 20 years, $200 billion over ten. If it doesn’t pass, we get that $38 billion back, but at the cost of all the other savings and revenues.
Yet, here we have a bill that saves $700 billion over 20 years, $200 billion over ten. If it doesn’t pass, we get that $38 billion back, but at the cost of all the other savings and revenues.
Two things. When did we start needing every bill scored by the CBO? Does any state have anything similar? Second, the bill that was scored included this $38 billion boondoggle?
I assume that it did not.
But if I told you that you could spend $38 and get $662 back, you’d do it.
I’d hate doing so, given what the trade-off is, but I’d do it.
I expect a repeat of this, except far worse:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_Protection,_Anti-terrorism_and_Illegal_Immigration_Control_Act_of_2005
I mean how could it get better?
I’m not sure what you mean. That was a bill that passed the Republican-controled House that was supported by a Republican president. It was opposed by all the immigrant advocacy groups. It was opposed by the Catholic Church. The Democrats hated it.
So, other than the possible phenomenon of having one chamber pass a bill and the other not pass it, I don’t see the corollary here.
Bush supported the House version? I assume his vision was more closely represented by the Senate bill.
Anyway, your last sentence is just it. Passes the Senate with as many or slightly more votes than last time (this bill also is worse than the 2006 version), the House passes a bill that cannot be reconciled, then it dies.
I’m going to bet that it dies in the House.
It won’t die there. It will die in conference like last time. The House version won’t have a pathway, it will give contracts galore to military profiteers, we’ll see street protests during the summer recess as House members rile the nativists.
It could die in conference.
It could die elsewhere.
Let’s say the bill passes with 70 votes in the Senate.
The House needs a bill, any bill, to pass that has some relation to immigration reform. I assume they can manage that. If they can’t, the effort dies there.
But the real point is to appoint conferees. That motion has pass the House. Conservatives will rightly feel like they are being set up to have the Conference gut the House bill and report out something with a pathway to citizenship. Boehner will probably have to violate the Hastert Rule to get the votes he needs to appoint conferees. He’s trying to avoid it, but it may not be possible to avoid it.
Once he takes that fatal step, passage of the bill is almost assured, but he has to be willing to take it.
When it goes to Conference, it’s possible that the Committee will deadlock and produce nothing, or that it will produce something that cannot pass for lack of Democratic or Republican support. I think that’s unlikely, however. A lot could depend on whether Grassley gets a slot on the Conference, which would be his right as ranking member of Judiciary.
In any case, there are several hills to die on here, but no reason to totally pessimistic at this point.
Am picturing Boehner locking himself in his closet to avoid pushing for passage; then, in a moment of clarity the Supreme Ct comes down with their decisions this week and he glombs onto them to fill his talking points and brings up a vote on ACA again.
Then there’s Cantor. Will he suddenly have a brain cell fire and decide to grab leadership to push the Bill through and kick Boehner off the last rail he’s holding onto?
Wouldn’t be surprised if Boehner isn’t calling up Mark Sanford and asking for his Appalachian trail map about right now.
I wonder if the repubs know this is a jobs bill. i saw somewhere that it will create about 30,000 jobs, what with new agents and suppliers to immigration service and fence builders.
And how many jobs will be lost because of the increased numbers of H1-B’s. That’s the real reason the Republicans support it.
While the cost of this boondoggle may be worth it in the grand scheme of things, having a bunch of poorly trained yahoos shooting at Mexicans on the other side of the river (something that seems to happen with some regularity)strikes me as more than a little concerning.
The problem with the border patrol is a problem all of law enforcement seems to have – it’s the sort of job that attracts the wrong kind of people. People who like to bully and control and dehumanize others. And at least some of them will be people who couldn’t get a job in any of the other law enforcement roles that already have that problem.
So I can see that the bill needs to go forward, out of fairness and budgetary considerations alone, but I sure wish we could be dual-tracking these guys on park service janitorial jobs so we can switch ’em when it starts to get ugly.
with 20,000 more Border Patrol agents it will be Congress opportunity to pass a JOBS bill since the 2008 Great Recession.
I think Orange Julius will be under tremendous pressure by the Republican Party to pass the bill at all costs. Because, if it fails, Hillary or Biden or Dean should start writing their 2016 Presidential Acceptance Speech.
Yep; looks like the Big Spending Republicans are coming to save the day.
$38 billion is more than the NIH budget, which those motherfuckers sequestered this year. Fuck these guys.
The ICE already gets more money than all other federal law enforcement agencies combined.
Yeah, no shit. It’s like people forgot all about DADT all of three years ago. When resistance breaks, it breaks.
It will easily pass in the senate. It will pass later this summer in the House with a majority of Democratic votes. Boehner might be beaten to death in the parking lot by the white supremacist caucus, but this bill was Too Big To Fail and long overdue.
History says we’ll be right back here in 25-30 years for the next generation of immigration overhaul and do this all over again, but for now, feel free to let your guard down and just be content for a change.
I don’t know, Joe. The House Republicans are pretty nuts. The Farm Bill is too big to fail, too, and look at it.
This exact bill should have passed 6 or 7 years ago. The GOP would have done well to pass it then. But they didn’t and now superior political action by people like Obama and Schumer and the DREAM Act lobby, etc. have ensured they have to pay the piper after all.
Too Big to Fail doesn’t have to do with the price tag. A farm bill can die to minimal protest. But if the House burns this thing, there will be ruckus in Washington and Los Angeles and 2014 and 2016 (and beyond) will be irreparably imperiled.
I look back at the 2012 elections, and the Republicans’ certainty of victory right up to and including election day, and I have to question whether most Republicans understand public opinion well enough to grasp the harm they are doing their party by being anti-immigrant.
I get what you mean about TBTF. There are all sorts of farmers and agribusiness interests who will freak the hell out if there is no farm bill.
They could train the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal on the Mexican border and the Rand Paul/Ted Cruz wingnut caucus would still vote no.