The immigration bill died tonight on a cloture vote of 45-50. I don’t know very many Democrats that are shedding any tears over it. I know the people that put sweat and tears into working out a comprehensive, bipartisan reform are feeling let down. But I didn’t like the bill. I haven’t talked to any Hispanics that liked the bill. I KNOW that most non-chamber of commerce Republicans HATED the bill. I’ve talked to bloggers and they are almost unanimous in their indifference.
I haven’t followed all the amendments and intricacies to the bill. My impression is that it was a mish-mash of crap that would lead the world in unintended consequences. So, I come at this not as a partisan on one side of the debate or the other. I guess I am modestly relieved it didn’t pass. I come at this from a political point of view.
This bill was President’s one big chance to work together with Democrats to pass major legislation. He had six months to convince his caucus to go along with the plan. And when the vote went down he was in Europe and Harry Reid was having trouble even getting in touch with his chief of staff. This is just one more significant failure for George W. Bush. And it is hard to see where he can go from here to make a mark.
In 2005, he wanted to revamp Social Security and he failed. Last year Congress couldn’t even pass their appropriation bills. And now this. Bush hasn’t had a major piece of domestic legislation pass since the No Child Left Behind bill in 2001.
He’s done nothing on entitlements, nothing really significant on health, nothing good on the environment, and he could accomplish nothing on immigration.
His legacy is threadbare. But, at least in the short-term, this might help Bush. He is down to about 30% approval in the polls, and those thirty percenters were the people most vociferously opposed to the immigration bill. If the bill had passed it might have put Bush down into the teens.
And the failure to pass the bill is a failure for the Democratic led Congress, too. Democrats need to have some successes to run on in 2008. So, this immigration bill failure doesn’t reflect very well on anyone.
I expect the media to focus on Bush’s impotence.
I’m torn because on the one hand if something had to pass, it’d be great for it to be on his head and drive his poll numbers lower. On the other hand, passage would have fired up a lot of Republican voters to go after those that passed it in Congress. Personally I’m for punting the issue to be tackled early in 2009 by a Democratic president and Congress so that a better bill can be passed and signed into law and the credit go to them. The reality is the problem isn’t as bad as many would lead us to believe and the fix probably doesn’t have to be anything stupid like a wall. Go after the employers and the Chambers of Commerce will howl but they don’t typically vote Dem any way and I love to hear them whine in pain and misery.
The bill sucked, but I’m not happy that the status quo is going to be continued. Expect to see more raids, more national guard deployments, more Border Patrol agents and permanent checkpoints. Of course, this bill would’ve provided even more of all that, so there’s a thin silver-lining, but now there will be that many more people who will remain targets of the Dept. of Homeland Security’s ire.
What Manny said. The Immigration Laws could have easily been fixed within the current system. When I read the “grand bargain” I had an idea it was a lot of smoke an mirrors and would probably end up dead.
Bottom line is the Republican Party wants a portion of this country’s population to live in the shadows without any effective legal rights. To a certain extent the CIR went against the core values the USA was built upon, equality and justice.
for the hardcore right wingers: Whatever happen to the words forgiveness and redemption…I guess those words don’t apply to the undocumented immigrants.
The best news I have heard in many a long month if not even more! Screw the chimp. He doesn’t deserve a single “victory” and screw the dems as well! Considering how well they have learned to cave, screw them too. It is June and there are what- 16 months or so till election day?- well, the time is running out on this war criminal and I have zero pathos for him and all of his spawn!
Does anyone think that he has a single thought regarding the 3500+ dead GIs? or the 600,000+ Iraqis? or the million or so folks that are dead in Darfur? or how about the poor bastards that will never get the chance to return to their homes since Katrina?
Nope, Not even a twinge of regret. To hell with them all- the gooper as well as the dems.
Heh. . .they were all trying to keep is drunken butt out of the news over there. Our alcoholic pres is back on the bottle (or still on the bottle)and “too sick” to make his meetings today. . .it’s a “tummy” thing.
25th ammendment time.
Yup. That’s the first thing I thought about when I heard that “story.” Sick, my ass–unless you mean he’s hung over. And while he’s off in Europe, his legislation goes down in flames.
His staff, meanwhile, doesn’t seem to be bothered. Maybe Reid thought, If the WH doesn’t give a hot damn, then I’m not carrying any more water for them.
And the failure to pass the bill is a failure for the Democratic led Congress, too.
Not really. Thanks to GOP race baiting, immigration is such a divisive topic that the Dems are wise not to be associated with any immigration legislation. There is not much they could do with it but lose votes.
Good riddance to bad rubbish. We can take another crack at it under a Democratic administration in a couple of years. It wasn’t going to work anyway, at least no better than the Medicare Drug revision. In my view the Dems were crazy (I’m looking at you Ted Kennedy) to have anything to do with anything coming out of this Administration. The whole business reminded me of the NAFTA act in 1993, which derailed for good Clinton’s already faltering Medical plan. It broke what little consensus there was for reform in the Democratic caucus, because Clinton used all his counters to pass what was essentially a Republican bill. The next year he got slaughtered at the polls anyway.
This bill was never going to do any good before the next election, so there was no reason to push it. Whatever gets passed will have to be a Democratic bill, because the Republican base will never accept anything short of concentration camps for the illegal immigrants.