Quote:
Originally Posted by skysla
Representative Gutierrez introduced his own bill just this month. Having him in the Senate would not have changed anything. Everything was about the health care bill in the Senate, anyway.
Also, if the Senate can pass Senator Schumer's bill, it might be much easier for the House Democrats. If the House Democrats decide to adopt Senator Schumer's bill instead of passing their own bill (Representative Gutierrez's bill), then they can always pass it after the Senate passes it. In other words, both chambers don't have to pass a bill at the same time. The Senate can pass a bill first and send it to the House, which can discuss and pass the same bill. Or, the House can pass a bill first and send it to the Senate, which can pass the same bill. If we can somehow get 60 or more votes in the Senate, the best scenario is that the House Democrats can adopt the Senate bill without changing anything and pass it. If that can ever happen, the Democrats won't need 60 votes again to pass it like they have to do for the health care bill right now. And, I think that's what the House Democrats will do if the Senate every passes one. They can always throw away Representative Gutierrez's bill and vote for Senator Schumer's bill. The House Democrats will wait for the Senate, anyway.
But, that's not likely to happen. Senator Schumer will have to make some kind of compromise to persuade some moderate Democrats or Republicans. Even after that, the Republicans might oppose everything if we are unfortunate enough.
The fact that there are more people in the House doesn't mean that it will be more difficult to pass it there. (Of course, that does not mean the passage of an immigration reform bill is easy in the House. I don't know how many Conservative or moderate Democrats will vote against it.) The Senate rule is the problem for us. We need to break the filibuster to begin and close any debate. That is why there were so many critical votes in the Senate during this messy health care debate. If all the Democratic Senators were for the CIR or the DREAM Act, we wouldn't have this problem. But, some Democratic Senators are not immigration-friendly. So, the fate of any immigration reform (or the DREAM Act) lies on how many Democratic Senators defect and how many Republican Senators replace those Democrats.
But, for now, our problem is that even the introduction of Senator Schumer's bill is uncertain. So, we need to contact the Democratic leadership and Senator Schumer until they introduce his bill and move it to the Senate floor. Then, we should begin to contact other moderate Senators.
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I was being philosophical when I said things might have been faster if Gutierrez was in the senate. Because if he was, I don't know who would introduce the bill in the house, and hence it would be a senate only bill. But of course that's far fetched of me to think, because either ways something as big as Immigration would have to show up in both Houses. And either ways Immigration would have no place to sit while that war on health care was going on.
But to clarify, neither house needs to adopt each others bills, once there is a bill in both houses with the same concept the houses must work the differences out so that the bills are identical(wasted two hours last night reading the articles in the house.gov website lol). Anyways what that means is that, If the debate begins early in the House of Reps about the CIR Gutierrez introduced, then it could give the senate an insight of what to expect from opposers of the bill. Hence giving Schumer a chance to adjust his bill before he introduces. Now that is all in theory of course, who knows wtf those politicians really have in mind.
Also.. it is harder for THIS particular bill to pass in the House... Because... Like i said before, there IS 435 minds with their own opinion on this. Immigration is a touchy subject with these politicians, it ain't no health care debate where they are just standing by their parties and were trying to get 1 republican vote. Its like you said it yourself, there are moderate democrats who aren't fond of immigrants. So yea, out of 435 people, we are gonna need 218 to win the vote, and we all know the republicans aren't going to be the only ones voting "no".