70 Senate Votes In Favor of CIR
 

Apparently we need 70 votes in favor of CIR in order for Boehner to not require for the bill to pass the majority of the majority in congress. In other words, if we do not get 70 votes in the senate, the bill will have to have the support of the majority of republican support in congress, which is very very unlikely to happen. Do you guys think we can get those 70 votes?

Re: 70 Senate Votes In Favor of CIR
 

Where are you getting this magic number from?

Re: 70 Senate Votes In Favor of CIR
 

Nope. We'll be lucky to have 65ish at most. I honestly think we'll get the votes needed in the House though so it shouldn't be an issue.

Re: 70 Senate Votes In Favor of CIR
 

Your question is far more convoluted than it should be. I also have no idea what you mean by "the majority of the majority in Congress"

However, this is basically Boehner's point:

While the Senate requires only a simple majority to pass a bill, the Senate also has a 60-vote requirement to invoke cloture and end a filibuster. There are currently (53+2) Democratic senators, and seemingly only a small Republican support is needed for cloture.

On the other hand, 70 votes in the senate would - in theory - only require 15 Republican votes - that is only 1/3 of all Republican seats in the Senate. The immigration bill, if it is meant to be bipartisan should be able to appease 33% of the more border enforcement-inclined party.

There are 201 Democrats in the House and 218 are needed to pass a bill. There is no filibuster and only a simple majority is required. Again, in theory less than 10% of Republicans would need to favor the bill for it to pass, but it will be very,very difficult to convince House Republicans the less Senate Republicans vote for the passage of the bill.

It is a numbers game: getting 5 in the Senate may be possible because after all it is only 5 people you have to convince, but this will also translate to a percentage of Republican seats in the upper house and getting only 11% of Republican support will hardly make it a bipartisan compromise and will simply make it bad politics for any House Republicans to support it and go against the majority of their party. Boehner is basically saying: if you manage to convince at least 30% of our colleagues in the Senate, I will deal with our people down here and push the bill through the House, keeping my own hands clean in the process.

This in no way means that if the bill only gets 67 votes in the Senate the House will simply kill the legislation. In my opinion, it might have the opposite result, as 12 Republicans would still constitute over 25% of red seats and would lead a lot of Republicans in the House to wonder and worry about the real future of their party.

Re: 70 Senate Votes In Favor of CIR
 

I don't agree that the question was convoluted, and your explanation missed the point of the post. The majority of the majority means exactly that; the majority of the majority. In simpler terms, the majority of congress is republican, so the majority of the majority in congress would be the majority of republicans.

Here is more on this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majority_of_the_majority

What Boehner has said is that he will not use the Majority of the Majority rule only on bills that pass the Senate with at least 70 votes. This means that if we do not get 70 votes in the Senate, Boehner might opt to user the Majority of the Majority rule, virtually killing the bill since there is no way more than half of house republicans are in favor of the bill. Hope that clarifies the question.

Re: 70 Senate Votes In Favor of CIR
 

I read it in some article, lost the link. But that is the general rule that Boehner has used for bills coming in from the Senate.

Re: 70 Senate Votes In Favor of CIR
 

I think you missed the point of the question. If we do not get the 70 votes in Senate, Boehner might require 50% of house republicans to agree with the immigration bill before even putting it up for vote against the whole house. And there is no way we will get 50% of house republicans to agree on it.

More on the Majority of the Majority rule http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majority_of_the_majority

Re: 70 Senate Votes In Favor of CIR
 

I thought 60 is to move on with the debate and than we just need 51 for passage?

Re: 70 Senate Votes In Favor of CIR
 

No I think 60 to pass.. Look at the gun bill it was like 54 yays and it failed

Re: 70 Senate Votes In Favor of CIR
 

54 Yay's to move on to the debate?