Harry Reid: Conference would lead to ‘win’

Ianus · 08-09-2013, 01:54 PM

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/0...win-95388.html

Quote:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) declared Friday that the Senate’s immigration bill would “win” if the two chambers ever went into bicameral negotiations to pass a comprehensive reform bill.

During an interview on KNPR, a public radio station based in Las Vegas, Reid said he feared that House Republicans would prevent a conference even if the chamber passed some small-bore immigration bills.

“If we go to conference, we would win,” Reid said, arguing that public opinion was on the side of the Senate and its Gang of Eight bill, which overhauls essentially every corner of the U.S. immigration system.

The Senate’s top Democrat noted that the chambers have not been able to go to conference over Republican objections; several GOP lawmakers are concerned about a potential debt ceiling hike from a conference committee.

Views such as Reid’s is precisely why conservatives in the House are reticent to go into a conference committee with the Senate on immigration. Many components of the Gang of Eight’s legislation – such as the 13-year pathway to citizenship – are anathema to House Republicans.

However, one House Republican – Rep. Jeff Denham of California – on Thursday defended the Senate’s bill, calling it legislation “that could have helped this community.”

“I think the Senate made tremendous progress,” Denham said, according to the Modesto Bee. “It was done bipartisan and I thought that would be enough to get the House moving forward.”

Earlier this week, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a top lieutenant to Reid and a leader of the Gang of Eight, said he was “OK” with the GOP-led House passing immigration reform in chunks – noting that those bills will get combined together in a conference committee.

Reid was more critical of the piecemeal method than Schumer. When the KNPR host noted that Republicans such as Nevada Rep. Joe Heck have called for a piece-by-piece process to rewriting the nation’s immigration laws, Reid replied that Heck was in a “dreamland.”

“We’ve tried to do that for decades,” Reid said of a piecemeal approach. “It’s like a puzzle … you have to do the whole puzzle. And we’ve got a puzzle here we’ve got to put together.”

Pianoswithoutfaith · 08-09-2013, 02:54 PM

Well 13 plus a whole list of stuff that's needs to get done first

2Face · 08-10-2013, 07:47 AM

Democrats need to start doing stuff rather than talking and making predictions otherwise this bill is dead very soon.

DA User · 08-10-2013, 02:17 PM

I think Reid has put more momentum in this one.

dtrt09 · 08-10-2013, 05:33 PM

Our lives are a big f***ing "if"..."when"...."would"...Reid needs to start thinking what bs he is going to spin to justify the White House squandering precious momentum and timing for immigration reform. See, if they had released their Senate bill on schedule - back in early March- we would have had four months to negotiate with the House. We can also think of many 'what-ifs'. Idiots.

The Senate bill deprives undocumented immigrants of their merits - everything to earn status has to be done prospectively, they will not count your contributions retroactively, they will not give you credit for having done things as rightly as possible and will punish you if you get old or sick. The Senate bill is asking for the equivalent of future 'time-served'; we will need to serve time in probation, even if our probation hs been already 20+ years in the making. Time spent in undocumented status and how we have led our lives has been our probation.

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Harry Reid: Conference would lead to ‘win’