Reform debate updates !!! - Page 69

Bush appears very confident about passing immigration. It could be all talk, but it is very promosing:

Yeah, Bush also said there was no way the Republicans could lose congress

I bought the Wall Street Journal today in which there's an article reporting that pro-immigration bill republicans will swing by Reid's office to show him a list of amendments that are to be debated in two or three days. And they have vowed to go up against their collegues and vote for cloture.

You need to be a subscriber in order to read the article through, but since I bough the paper I typed the entire artcle.



Who Killed the Immigration Bill?
By Fred Barnes





For a seasoned politician, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is unusually transparent. Politicians, as a rule, try to mask their political motives -- but upon yanking the bipartisan immigration reform bill from the Senate floor last Thursday, Mr. Reid declared its demise to be the fault of President Bush. He said the headline would be: Democrats voted for the bill, Republicans didn't, and "the president fails again."

It was "the president's bill," Mr. Reid insisted, elaborating a theme he obviously hoped the media, no friend of the president, would echo. Mr. Bush, he claimed, was no help in limiting debate and speeding the measure toward a vote. "Where are the president's men?" Mr. Reid asked. "Where are the president's people helping up with these votes?"

True enough, neither the White House nor most of the so-called "grand bargainers" who'd drafted the immigration bill were on Mr. Reid's side when he called for restricting debate through cloture. They wanted a few more days to debate additional Republican amendments. They voted against cloture, and when it failed, Mr. Reid snatched the bill from the Senate floor.

Yet Mr. Reid was putting blame for defeat upon the one man -- Mr. Bush -- whose unwavering support for immigration reform had never before been questioned. Now the fate of immigration reform, the most important domestic legislation of the 2000s, rests solely in the hands of the Senate Majority Leader. Mr. Bush and Republicans can't put the bill back on the Senate floor. Only Mr. Reid can.

Mr. Reid faulted the president for not lobbying for the bill and for being overseas (at the G-8 meeting in Germany) at a crucial juncture, thereby helping to foster a widespread and erroneous impression that he, Mr. Reid, was sparing immigration reform and the grand bargainers an embarrassing defeat. Quite the contrary. The bill was "well within reach" of approval by the Senate, said Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, the chief Democratic drafter of the bill and its floor manager. It was the opponents of the bill who had grown pessimistic and desperate.

A solid majority of Republican senators had demonstrated their support by voting to retain the key provision making the 12 million immigrants living in America eligible to stay indefinitely with special Z visas. This is the provision most detested by the bill's conservative and Republican detractors.

So what was Mr. Reid's real problem? He indicated he feared Republicans would offer an endless stream of amendments -- a filibuster, in effect. Yet Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and pro-bill Republicans such as Jon Kyl of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina promised they wouldn't let this happen. Mr. Kennedy made a last-minute plea to keep the bill alive, but Mr. Reid deep-sixed it anyway.

Mr. Reid said he favors the immigration bill and indeed he may. But he also has political interests. These include enlarging the Democratic majority (now 51-49) in the Senate and the election of a Democratic president. And it's here that Mr. Reid's Bush-bashing language is most revealing.

For Democrats in 2008, running against Mr. Bush as a failed president would be ideal, just as it was in 2006. The normal political pattern is that unpopular presidents with minimal accomplishments are succeeded by presidents of the other party. The passage of sweeping and generous immigration legislation on Mr. Bush's watch might jeopardize that. The president might not look so much of a failure. Moreover, the passage of that legislation would also take an issue that bitterly divides Republicans off the table.

In truth, Mr. Bush had only a small role in shaping the actual immigration proposal before Congress. It's not, as Mr. Reid claimed, the president's bill, though the president certainly backs it. The instigator of Senate negotiations on immigration was Sen. McConnell, who believes a controversial issue like immigration can best be dealt during a time of divided government in Washington, in this case a Democratic Congress and a Republican president.

The White House was invited to join Senate talks, but only after a number of sessions had already been held. Mr. Bush sent two Cabinet secretaries, Michael Chertoff of Homeland Security and Carlos Gutierrez of Commerce. They obtained one significant change, dropping the obligation of illegal immigrants seeking a Z visa to pay back taxes. That requirement, however, was reinstated on the Senate floor.

While Mr. Reid criticized Mr. Bush for doing too little on behalf of the bill, the president may ironically have done too much. When he attacked conservative foes of the bill for opposing "what's right for America," Mr. Bush stirred an angry backlash and was scolded by supporters and opponents alike for political clumsiness. Mr. Bush plans to meet with Senate Republicans tomorrow. But even among Republicans, his influence on Capitol Hill has all but vanished.

Mr. Reid was also being disingenuous when he said that the Senate needed to move on and take up energy legislation. Instead, he plans to bring before the Senate today a motion censuring Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. It is non-binding and a purely political gesture.

Sorry the article is quite large, but it continues here.

When not castigating Mr. Gonzales, Mr. Reid is to be visited today by Republican supporters of the bill led by Mr. Kyl, who has withstood enormous pressure in his home state to abandon immigration reform and split with his chief ally, Mr. Kennedy. Mr. Kyl is to present the majority leader with a scaled down list of a dozen or so Republican amendments. These would be debated over two or three days, along with Democratic amendments. If Mr. Reid agrees to revive the bill, Republicans would promise to join him in seeking cloture, thus thwarting diehard Republicans seeking to filibuster the bill to death.


And, by the way, Democratic senators do have more amendments. After all, as Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico has pointed out, the bill was brought directly to the Senate floor, skipping the committee process in which a bill's details are routinely worked out. Now the details can only be dealt with through floor amendments.

Mr. Reid bristled when Mr. McConnell told him the legislative successes of the newly Democratic Senate would be meager without immigration reform. Not only that, Mr. Reid risks alienating Hispanic and other immigration groups who are prepared to hold him, rather than Mr. Bush and Republicans, responsible if the immigration bill dies in the Senate.

Should it pass, however, Mr. Reid will get considerable credit. So will the president. Mr. Bush didn't author the bill, but he has been a fervent backer of immigration reform since he was governor of Texas. He is the godfather of immigration reform.

Mr. Reid can blame the president all he wants. But the decision on resuming Senate deliberations -- and in all likelihood passing the most significant immigration legislation since the 1960s -- is his alone. Mr. Reid can be the hero who saved immigration reform. Or the goat who killed it.




Maybe is good thing that Reid pulled the bill from the floor, now they know how wrong they did and are crawling back to him.

WOW thanks hayire thats nice of you to type it out for us, im reading it now.

Awesome, hayire!

i think i saw reid on cspan saying immigration would be brought back after the energy bill.

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070611/ap_on_re_eu/bush

Are you sure?

not too sure cos i had it on captions lol but i think dats what i read tho.