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Immigration bill fails key cloture vote |
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By Manu Raju
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Posted: 06/07/07 09:29 PM [ET] |
The Senate on Thursday night rejected an effort to shut down debate on comprehensive immigration legislation, casting doubt that the 110th Congress will hand President Bush a signature domestic achievement in his final two years in office.
Ending two weeks of emotional debate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is pulling the bill from the floor after the 45-50 vote. Supporters of the measure fell 15 shy of reaching the 60 vote threshold needed to move toward a final vote on the underlying bill. Reid said he may bring the bill back to the floor later this year if there can be an agreement with Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky on debating a set number of amendments.
“This has been a very difficult time,” Reid said. “I think there’s been a lot of bending over backwards to accommodate people who wanted to offer amendments.”
“On the matter we’re dealing with tonight, both of us desire the same result, which is to get a bipartisan immigration bill that will be an improvement over the disastrous status quo on this important issue in America today,” McConnell said. But he added that Reid’s strategy of moving to shut down debate does “not produce results.”
“We could have finished this bill in a couple of days in my judgment,” the Republican said.
The dramatic turn of events capped a day of partisan bickering over the process for finalizing the bill, which would have given an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.
The vote ended what had been the Senate’s most earnest effort thus far to strike a bipartisan accord on a major and contentious piece of legislation. But as negotiations have broken down, both sides are seeking to limit the political fallout.
Since the bill failed on a procedural motion, it gives both parties cover when trying to court the influential Latino vote in the 2008 elections.
Republicans contend that Democrats killed the bill by refusing to allow enough floor time to debate relevant amendments. But Democrats argue that Republicans were trying to bog down the bill with “poison pill” amendments aimed at killing the comprehensive overhaul. Reid blamed Bush for not taking a more active role in persuading Republicans to support the cloture vote.
“He has only a relatively short piece of time to help us with this legislation,” Reid said of Bush and his remaining time in office.
How the outcome plays out to the parties’ respective bases remains to be seen. Bush and Republicans who helped negotiate the overhaul, including Jon Kyl of Arizona, have been lambasted by the Republican base for provisions in the bill that they claim would give “amnesty” to undocumented immigrant workers.
Liberal groups, meanwhile, were perturbed by a guest worker provision in the bill they felt would create an underclass of low-wage workers, and for language in the bill emphasizing immigrants’ rights to enter the country had to be linked to job skills, rather than family ties.
After the bill’s failure, Reid moved immediately to energy legislation, which will dominate the Senate’s floor schedule next week. |
