Immigration Bill Stalls As It Suffers A Stunning Crucial Crushing Blow
Terry Trippany on Jun 07 2007 at 10:14 pm | Filed under: Illegal Immigration
The headline that accompanies this post sums up the MSM reaction in reaction to the latest and most severe setback for President Bush and Ted Kennedy’s immigration giveaway.
WASHINGTON, June 7 — The sweeping immigration overhaul endorsed by President Bush crumbled in the Senate on Thursday night, leaving the future of one of the administration’s chief domestic priorities in serious doubt.
After a day of tension and fruitless maneuvering, senators rejected a Democratic call to move toward a final vote on the compromise legislation after Republicans complained they were not given sufficient opportunity to reshape the bill. Supporters of cutting off the debate got only 45 of the 60 votes they needed; 50 senators opposed the cutoff. – NY Times
The AP calls the setback “stunning”. Really? Have they not been watching the developments as people from both the right and the left criticized the bill for the sham that it really was? I’m not sure which is worse, the AP writers pretending to be journalists or the Senate pretending that their hastily thrown together bureaucratic nightmare was going to pass the sniff test once debate unveiled the myriad of problems lurking behind every facet of the text.
Senator Reid is promising to bring it back somewhere down the road. No surprise there.
The outcome, which followed an outpouring of criticism of the measure from core Republican voters and from liberal Democrats as well, was a significant setback for the president. It came mainly at the hands of members of his own party after he championed the measure in the hope of claiming it as a major achievement on domestic policy in the last months of his administration.
It was also a disappointment for a bipartisan group of about a dozen senators who met privately for three months to broker a compromise that tried to balance a call for stricter border enforcement with a way for many of the 12 million people who are illegally in the country to qualify for citizenship eventually.
Senate conservatives fought the legislation from the start, saying that it rewarded those who broke the law by their illegal entry into the country. After winning a few important changes in the measure, Republican critics demanded more time and colleagues supported their calls for more opportunity to fight it out on the Senate floor.
Mr. Reid said the critics of the bill were simply stalling and would never be satisfied. He attributed the failure of the bill to Republican recalcitrance.
“We’ve done more than our share,” Mr. Reid said. “We’ve sent all the signals we can to get the president to help. It’s his bill.”
Mr. Reid did leave the door open to returning to the bill later this year.
Reid is an idiot. Nobody will ever be fully satisfied but compromise could have been accomplished if the Senate was minutely interested in solving the problem. The fact of the matter is that hard working American’s are sick of being lied to by politicians who only serve their own self serving agenda. Tuition giveaways, nanny state politics, line jumping and porous enforcement was only the half of it.
Bush, Kennedy, McCain, Graham and all the rest of the proponents of the Bill had nothing but deceitful race baiting strawman arguments to offer as they offended their own supporters with rhetoric that unveiled their true colors. This was never about what the people wanted; it was an opportunistic attempt to buy votes and pander to special interest groups, big business lobbyists and future voters.
This is a temporary win that was hard fought. Don’t think that voters will not forget. The politicians who come up with a way to fix the open borders first will be the real winners in this issue. Then, and only then will American’s be willing to discuss citizenship, tuition and guest worker.
Previous: Lindsey Graham To Conservatives – ‘You’re Wrong’, If This Doesn’t Anger You Nothing Will, Webloggin Immigration Watch
Others: Right Truth, Michelle Malkin, Hot Air, Captain’s Quarters, FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog
President Bush, Ted Kennedy’, immigration, Senate
You say “The politicians who come up with a way to fix the open borders first will be the real winners in this issue.”
I hope the politicians realize this. People have worked very hard to get our message through. Of course we don’t have a special phone line into politicians offices like the Spanish speaking folks do.
Victory! Senate Immigration ‘Grand Bargain’ Withdrawn After 45-50 Cloture Defeat (S.1348)…
The “Grand Bargain” Senate Immigration Bill (S.1348) was dealt a devastating blow and withdrawn by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid after a cloture vote on it was defeated by a vote of 45-50. The bill would have needed 60 votes……
[...] Immigration Bill Stalls As It Suffers A Stunning Crucial Crushing Blow [...]