Beck on the defeat of DREAM Act; Malkin on Senate debate

In an e-mail sent out at 3:15 this afternoon, Roy Beck declares:

VICTORY!

YOU BEAT BACK CHANCES FOR THE DREAM ACT

SENATE CLOTURE VOTE FAILS

The Senate just failed by a count of 56-43 to approve cloture, which would have allowed debate to begin on a Defense bill that Senate leaders hoped would include the DREAM Act amnesty.

Interesting. The DREAM Act apparently was not yet included in the defense bill, it was only going to be included AFTER the defense bill passed cloture and final debate started, but since the defense bill failed, the DREAM Act goes nowhere. Talk about not wanting to know how sausage is made.

However, I still want to know how the defense authorization bill gets passed. The country does need a defense bill, doesn’t it?

Beck continues:

Because it takes 60 votes for cloture, the Defense bill had to be pulled.

The insistence of Senate Majority Leader Reid (D-Nev.) in using the Defense bill as a vehicle for the amnesty was one of the key reasons why Republicans refused to allow debate on the bill.

Every Republican (except Sen. Murkowski of Alaska who was absent) voted NO.

Sen. Pryor of Arkansas looked to be the sole Democrat who would vote against Reid but, in the end, his fellow Arkansas Democrat Sen. Lincoln also voted NO.

It would be unfair to infer that every Democrat voting YES to start debate supports the DREAM amnesty. We know that on a direct up or down on the amnesty, many of the Democrats would have voted NO. But this opening cloture vote was one that pushed Democrats to show Party loyalty to just start the debate….

The amnesty threat has receded for the moment, although Sen. Reid promised he would bring the DREAM amnesty back up for a vote later this year. I’ll talk later about that possibility.

[end of Beck e-mail]

Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin quotes Sen. Sessions on the utterly corrupt process by which Reid sought to ram through the DREAM Act:

…Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who does not support the measure, underscored why some of its supporters may not support Reid’s effort, as Senate Majority Leader, to amend the defense-authorization bill (S. 3454) with the measure in a statement Monday.

“The Majority Leader is preparing to significantly limit debate on the annual defense bill so that he can ram through two controversial election-year priorities: repeal of the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ law and enactment of a controversial amnesty program known as the DREAM Act. In doing so, he is ignoring the clear wishes of the American people and demonstrating that Washington remains deeply out of touch with everyday Americans,” said Sessions, who is ranking member of the Judiciary Committee.

He added: “The Democrats’ effort to tack the DREAM Act onto the unrelated defense bill is a transparent attempt to force a controversial immigration amnesty program on the American people–a measure that the Senate has repeatedly rejected when considered by itself.”

The move circumvents proper debate of the defense authorization bill, which normally would take a week or more, as Reid has vowed to limit debate and block most amendments to speed the bill through the Senate, Sessions argued. Reid plans to allow votes on the DREAM Act, the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ measure to legalize gay military service members, and an amendment to block abortions in military hospitals.

Sessions also attacked the bill on its merits, saying it would provide amnesty for millions of illegal aliens and offer in-state college tuition to people who do not deserve it….

Here, also from Malkin’s site, is Sen. McConnell speaking this morning, with a very different take from Sen. Sessions. McConnell tears apart Sen. Reid, not for trying to ram through the unwanted measures, but for deliberately loading the defense bill with measures that cannot pass, and thus delaying the passage of the defense bill itself, solely to impress Hispanic voters with Democrats’ attempt to “do something” for them, so that the Hispanics will come out on election day and save the Democrats’ sorry hides:

“The defense authorization bill requires four or five weeks to debate at a minimum.

“But instead of having that debate or turning to the Defense Appropriations Bill which funds the military, they want to use this week for a political exercise they want to weigh this bill down with controversy in a transparent attempt to show their special interest groups that they haven’t forgotten about them ahead of the election.

“It’s astonishing, really.

“Democrats have called up this bill not to have a vote on it or to consider amendments to help our troops in the field, but to put on a show to use it as an opportunity to cast votes for things Americans either don’t want or aren’t interested in seeing attached to a bill that’s supposed to be about defense.

“The Majority Leader has already said this bill isn’t going to pass with these items attached to it before the election but he’s keeping them on there anyway.

“So this is not a serious exercise. It’s a show.

“And it’s because of shows like this that our friends have lost credibility with the public.

“Americans want us to take care of the basics and to do it competently.

“This isn’t too much to ask.

“But evidently, it’s too much to ask of Democrat leaders in Congress before the election.”

Malkin writes:

Update 2:43pm Eastern The cloture vote is now underway … Reid refused to strip immigration provisions …

Hmm, so the DREAM Act was part of the defense bill, not a separate amendment to be added after closture.

Malkin continues:

2:58pm Eastern Cloture vote FAILS to reach 60-vote threshold, GOP sticks together … now pass a clean bill and do it the right way.

FYI: Democrats Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor voted no, joining all Republicans. Murkowski is out all week and missed the vote.

Reid voted no in order to file a motion to reconsider. Dick Durbin took the floor after the vote to lament the fate of his DREAM Act nightmare.

Reid: “We’re going to vote on the DREAM Act. It’s only a question of when.”

Durbin: “It’s a matter of American justice” to pass the illegal alien student bailout.

[end of Malkin excerpt]

Notice that the DREAM Act is not just something that they WANT. Oh, no, it’s a matter of “justice.”

But what is “just” about giving permanent legal residency to a person who entered and resides in this country illegally? In reality, this DREAM Act is just something that Hispanics WANT, as an enhancement of their ethnic power and perquisites. The Modern Nanny State is about giving people what they want—more and more and more. The Modern Multiculturalist Nanny State is about giving nonwhite groups what they want—more and more and more. But to the liberals, whatever their client constituencies—particularly their nonwhite client constituencies—WANT, must be portrayed as an essential matter of JUSTICE, so that minorities’ desires for government largesse are JUSTICE, while opposition to this largesse is INJUSTICE. And since there is no end to human desires, whether of individuals or entitled ethnic groups, there is no end to the claims of JUSTICE, and no end to the INJUSTICE of denying people their desires, and thus no end to the demagoguery of calling the opponents of unlimited government largesse “greedy,” “selfish,” “racist,” “bigoted,” “out of step with American justice.”

How disgusting Durbin is. How I wish that every minority-pandering left-liberal like him was expunged from American politics.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 21, 2010 11:46 PM | Send