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Is Reid pushing for final victory or showing the white flag?
In a maddeningly contradictory article, today’s New York Times reports that Majority Leader Reid has announced that he will call for a cloture vote on Thursday to cut off debate on the immigration bill, which would end the introduction of further amendments and move the bill to an early vote. At the same time, Reid says that if the bill fails to get the required 60 votes to invoke cloture, he will put the bill aside and move on to other legislative matters, adding that if this happens he sees little chance of the Senate returning to the bill at a later time. So what’s going on? Is Reid making his big move to pass the National Suicide Act in the next few days? Or is he throwing in the towel? Are we looking here at defeat or victory? And here’s another oddity. According to the Times, Republican senators are outraged that Reid would seek to invoke cloture at this point, because they have lots more amendments they want to propose. I pointed out yesterday the disturbing fact that the whole debate thus far consists of senators proposing amendment, rather than looking at the actual bill and debating whether it is a good bill. The Republicans’ response to Reid’s announcement would seem to confirm the impression that no one in the Senate, except for Sen. Sessions, is looking at the bill as a whole.
David B. writes:
My feeling is that the Democrats don’t want Bush to get the credit for “immigration reform.” They figure they can do it themselves in two years when they have the White House as well as both House and Senate.Karl H. writes:
Although it does appear, sadly enough, that the immigration bill will pass the Senate, I do take some hope from Jay Cost’s analysis at RealClearPolitics that it will likely fail in the House. He argues from a general political science perspective, looking at the mechanics of compromise in our legislative bodies, but the argument seems to have merit. Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 06, 2007 07:55 AM | Send Email entry |