Wonkbook: Does the Senate immigration bill really need 70 votes?[Blog entry]

Ianus · 06-25-2013, 08:52 PM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...need-70-votes/

Quote:

How a bill (maybe) becomes a law, revised Senate edition.

- It needs 51 votes to pass.

- It needs 60 votes to pass a filibuster.

- It needs 70 votes to pass the arbitrary convince-the-House test.

The Senate immigration bill clearly has 51 votes. It clearly has 60 votes. As of last night, it’s not clear it has 70 votes. But it’s also not clear that matters.

The test came on the vote for the Corker-Hoeven amendment, which toughens the bill’s border security measures — “almost overkill,” says Sen. Bob Corker — in order to attract more Republican support. Final tally? 67 “ayes” — which you’ll notice is not quite 70.

But there were only 27 “nays”. A handful of senators weren’t around. So it’s still possible the immigration bill will, in the end, hit 70 votes, if all senators are present and voting.

The question is what 70 votes buys it (80 votes, as everyone knows, means the Senate gets to throw a pizza party at the end of the year). The Gang of Eight theory is that a Senate immigration bill that gets 70 votes will put pressure on the House in a way a Senate immigration bill that gets 60 votes won’t. Why? That’s where things get a bit fuzzy.

The view among the Gang of Eight is that the House simply won’t feel able to resist such an overwhelming bipartisan compromise in the Senate. But there are plenty of skeptics for that view.

“You mean like how the overwhelming Senate vote for the farm bill pressured the House?” Snarked one senior Senate Republican leadership aide. “The same people who are for this bill — business community, mainstream Republicans — were also for a debt deal and that didn’t get done, did it?” Says a Senate Democratic aide. “It makes little, if any, difference,” said a senior aide to the House Republican leadership.

The most plausible path by which the 70 votes matters is if the House can’t move legislation of its own and Boehner needs to decide whether to simply vote on the Senate bill. Perhaps, in that case, the broad bipartisan support for the Senate bill gives Boehner cover to bring it to the floor of the House.

But if the House does manage its own bill, it’s hard to see how the 70 votes matters. There, the 70-vote plan could even backfire. The Senate typically jams the House by passing legislation with 60 votes and then arguing the compromise is so delicate that it can’t be substantially modified. In this case, the House could plausibly argue that the Senate has at least 10 votes to spare (and 19 if there’s no viable filibuster) and so can afford to move towards the House in conference.

It could backfire in another way, too. Everyone in the House agrees that the House bill will have to be measurably to the right of the Senate bill. So every reasonable (or at least non-deal killing) compromise the Senate makes to get 70 votes is one fewer non-deal killing compromise the House can make to show they’ve pulled the Senate bill to the right. And if there are no big non-deal killing compromises available to them, that doesn’t mean they’ll simply pass the Senate bill unchanged. It means they’ll start in on revisions that will kill the deal.

In the end, immigration reform comes down to whether a critical mass of House Republicans want to pass an immigration bill that includes some kind of viable path to citizenship. If that’s the case, then immigration can pass whether it gets 62 votes in the Senate or 67 or 75. But if it’s not, then there’s no vote in the Senate that will be enough for the House.

And that “critical mass” idea is important. There’s an argument going around — one that I’ve bought into at times — that House Speaker John Boehner is the only player that really matters because he can bring something to the floor even if it doesn’t command a majority of his members. But John Lawrence, who served until recently as Nancy Pelosi’s chief of staff, is skeptical.

“All this talk about how Boehner could sacrifice his speakership to get a bill is absurd,” he says. “First of all, Speakers don’t ‘sacrifice their speakership.’ That’s not the mentality that got them elected speaker in the first place. But more importantly, there’s no evidence Boehner has the skills to push through something that has the vociferous opposition of a substantial part of his caucus.”

Which is to say, a Hastert rule violation in a world where House Republicans didn’t want to see the Hastert rule violated wouldn’t guarantee the passage of an immigration bill. A lot of House Republicans need to want to get this done if it’s going to get done.

immigration truth · 06-25-2013, 09:04 PM

Ianus, if you had to make a prediction on what's exactly going to happen to this legislation in the house, what would it be? I'm interested to hear your view.

Ianus · 06-25-2013, 10:01 PM

I think anyone should be careful about any prediction while the process is still being deliberated.We should all have a poker face until it is clear what the Speaker will do.

In the end,I don't see how much choice the Speaker has with elections next year.I think if pro-immigrants groups were smart they would start registering new pro-immigrant voters in the appropriate number of House Republican swing districts where it would get Boehner's attention.

DA User · 06-26-2013, 02:44 AM

- It needs 51 votes to pass.

- It needs 60 votes to pass a filibuster.

- It needs 70 votes to pass the arbitrary convince-the-House test.

-It needs 75 or more votes to satisfy DA User? Lol!

Pianoswithoutfaith · 06-26-2013, 04:27 AM

why do you talk to your self in 3rd person view?

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Wonkbook: Does the Senate immigration bill really need 70 votes?[Blog entry]