Victory Or Death For The Senate Immigration Bill? (It’s Death — The Bill Has Failed 45-50 And It’s Not Coming Back)

by John Hawkins | June 7, 2007 5:35 pm

Believe it or not, we may be headed towards victory. Mitch McConnell just caved to the pressure and said on the Senate floor that he opposed cloture.

Don’t get overconfident though because there is another vote coming up at 5 PM and Reid will definitely be twisting arms to get to 60 votes.

If they can’t get cloture, the bill isn’t dead, but it will probably lose momentum.

Update #1: The bill just failed another cloture vote 33-63, but over at the Corner, Kathryn Jean Lopez[1] writes,

“A Senate staffer cautions: ‘this is FAR from dead. It’s wounded, but very much alive.” Though Reid is unlikely to get cloture today, Senate staffers assure me the dealmakers aren’t going to go down without a fight.'”

Update #2: I was listening to Rush Limbaugh and his theory is that Harry Reid wants the bill dead. That’s why he allowed Byron Dorgan to keep bringing up a killer amendment that killed the guest worker bill (that’s sucking a lot of the life out of the bill because the business lobby is hungry for cheap workers).

Why? Maybe because the Democrats in the House have soured on it and he realizes it can’t pass (A lot of black Congressional Caucus members have gotten an earful about it from their constituents), so he might as well kill it and blame the Republicans for it.

Last but not least, Rush noted that the bill is not dead yet, so don’t ease up.

Update #3: Folks, I’ve been talking to a highly placed staffer in the Senate who wishes to remain anonymous and he told me that he thinks the blowout cloture vote in the Senate at noon was probably the beginning of the end for the bill.

He also said the opponents of the bill smell blood in the water and are dragging their feet to slow the process up. He also says that he expects the cloture vote tonight to fail and then he thinks Reid will pull it either later tonight or tomorrow. He did add a caveat though, and I quote, “(T)his is the Senate and crazy stuff happens occasionally.” In other words, it looks good, but don’t get overconfident.

Update #4: I’m not sure how long we’re going to have to wait for a cloture vote (We were supposed to have it at 5 PM) because some behind the scenes maneuvering is stopping any new Amendments from making it to the floor and that has thrown the “grand sellout” coalition into disarray.

Update #5: I like the sound of this[2]!

“…Moments ago in a off-camera briefing, Reid said if the vote failed again he’d pull the bill from the floor indefinitely saying, “the bill’s over with. The bill’s gone.” He never said it was dead, but indicated he clearly had other priorities to put before the Senate in the coming weeks.

…The time for the vote hasn’t been determined, but staff “guesstimates” range from as early as 4 p.m. to as late as 8 p.m.”

Come on, come on, come on, it’s time for this amnesty bill to DIE ALREADY! Of course, they may bring it back later, but the closer we get to the election, the more terrified the Republicans will be about the repercussions of supporting it. So, this isn’t the last chance to pass an amnesty bill, but it’s the best chance to pass an amnesty bill.

Of course, even if the bill goes down to the horrible, fiery death it deserves, we have laws on the book that say we SHALL build 854 miles of fencing and we have increases in the number of border patrol workers written into law as well. If we simply do those two things and continue deporting illegals, it will do far more to cut down on illegal immigration than this bill will — but, can we count on Bush to enforce the law if he knows he can’t get his amnesty bill? Unfortunately, the answer is probably not…

Update #6: They had the cloture vote and America got 50 votes, while the Bush/Kennedy/McCain/Reid/Mexico team only got 45 out of the 60 it needs to get an amnesty through.

Is this the end of it? Well, the momentum has certainly stalled, but it’s not dead because I just watched Mitch McConnell suggest that the bill should be brought back up and that if it got enough amendment votes, he would vote for it and that he thought it was overwhelmingly likely to get cloture.

PS #1: A source in the Senate says this bill is as dead as Stalin and it won’t be becoming back no matter what McConnell is saying on the floor.

PS #2: Arlen Specter just said that he wondered what people watching this on C-Span are thinking. As someone who’s watching on C-Span, I’m thinking, “Thank Jim DeMint, Jeff Sessions, Tom Coburn, Elizabeth Dole, and God that this didn’t succeed.”