HomeLeading The News Both sides blame each other, trade barbs on immigration legislation
Leading The News
Both sides blame each other, trade barbs on immigration legislation
By Manu Raju and Elana Schor
Posted: 06/08/07 07:33 PM [ET]
As prospects dimmed on immigration legislation yesterday, senators from both parties started targeting scapegoats in a bid to limit the political backlash from a failure to pass the sweeping bill.
New opponents and roadblocks surfaced yesterday, threatening to tear apart the fragile, bipartisan coalition that has stayed intact for weeks.
But the biggest obstacle was the process. Republicans balked at initial Democratic efforts to limit debate and move to a final vote on the far-reaching bill, which would establish a process for 12 million illegal immigrants to win legal status.
Regardless of the outcome of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.’s) second bid to limit debate on the bill, which was scheduled after press time yesterday, final passage of the behemoth immigration bill remains a heavy lift. The measure has come under sustained attack from the base of both parties.
Mindful that Latinos will play a greater role in the 2008 elections, leaders from both parties yesterday traded sharp attacks to deflect blame from a key part of the electorate.
Reid and the Democrats sought to portray the failure as President Bush’s responsibility, pointing to a lack of Republican support for limiting debate even though reforming the nation’s immigration laws is a top priority for the White House.
“The headline is going to be: ‘The president fails again,’” Reid said.
But some Republicans said lobbying by Bush could only make things worse.
“With regards to the president on this issue, I hope he concentrates on the G8. His comments last week were not helpful,” said Senate Republican Whip Trent Lott of Mississippi, referring to Bush’s strong criticism of Republicans who call the bill “amnesty.”
But Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) pointed a finger at Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), echoing Democrats’ weeklong assertions that Republicans are stalling in an effort to kill the bill by procedural means.
“He wants a longer parade, he wants more and more floats,” said Durbin as he described McConnell’s repeated amendment requests.
After a cloture vote to limit debate yesterday failed by a decisive 63-33 vote, Reid said he would pull the bill from the floor if the Senate failed to invoke cloture a second time.
“It’s not our fault,” the majority leader argued on the Senate floor.
On their part, Republicans blamed Democrats for effectively killing the bill by not allowing for enough time to debate the complexities of immigration legislation.
To get the bill through the Senate, “it’s going to take more votes than you’d like to make,” McConnell shot back.
Failure to work through Republican concerns in a narrowly divided Senate “is the reason why this Congress to this point has a paltry list of accomplishments,” McConnell said, calling Reid’s move a “power grab.”
If cloture is not won as the weekend approaches, Reid could push immigration into next week or move on to the waiting energy bill and no-confidence vote on embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Reid has said that the immigration measure is unlikely to reemerge if this two-week run does not succeed, but anything is possible after a debate full of unexpected shifts and anti-climaxes.
Even as Republicans were pushing for more amendments to be considered, earlier yesterday some initial supporters were threatening to withdraw their backing if the Senate kept language adopted Wednesday to sunset a guest-worker program after five years.
That language was adopted after the Senate voted 49-48 to approve the amendment, which was authored by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.). A key Republican negotiator, Jon Kyl of Arizona, said the bill was “off track” and the language needed to be stripped before final passage.
To complicate matters, four of Kyl’s Republican colleagues— who had initially opposed the Dorgan amendment — eventually voted for it in a bid to kill the underlying bill.
“This was the opportunity, if you couldn’t strip amnesty out of it, to say ‘No’ to the legislation,” said Elizabeth Dole (R) of North Carolina, who was joined by Republicans Mike Enzi of Wyoming, Jim DeMint of South Carolina, and Jim Bunning of Kentucky in switching her vote in favor of the Dorgan amendment.
An angry Lott lashed out at those Republicans, saying, “I don’t think that’s responsible.”
“I am embarrassed to say they were trying to kill the bill by passing that,” Lott said. “And I told them what I think of that. And I probably am going to tell them more later. In my opinion, I think that was not a good thing to do, period.”
Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who had originally opposed Dorgan to show “good faith” with the immigration negotiating team that he had helped lead before splitting from the final deal, also had harsh words.
After the bill moved rightward and several family-reunification changes he backed fell short, Menendez told The Hill “there was no need to continue to try to show more good faith.”
If cloture fails, Menendez said the bill’s fate would rest with the balance between senators who want it to collapse and those who want to continue the difficult process of compromise. But he warned: “The bill’s only getting worse, not better, with every amendment that passes.”
Meanwhile, outside interest groups on both ends kept working to bring down the legislation unless changes could be made to reflect their priorities.
The National Network for Immigrant & Refugee Rights sent members a bilingual alert calling for intensified grassroots lobbying against the bill, writing that “the so-called ‘grand bargain’ … contains many problematic provisions and does not respect the human rights of immigrants.”
The League of United Latin American Citizens, which had supported early work on the bill, wrote to 15 Democratic senators late Tuesday “after much debate, analysis and soul-searching,” asking them to oppose the bill as written and “join in totally re-crafting [it].” Four other Hispanic advocacy groups co-signed the letter.
For its part, the National Governors Association rapped the bill’s proposed use of “Real ID,” a national identification program plagued by controversy and delays, to verify all workers’ employment status.
Montana’s two Democratic senators, Max Baucus and Jon Tester, are pushing to strike Real ID from the bill, even though they had not won a vote as of press time.
