Immigration Bill sleeps with the fishes
It seems that Senator DeMint, among others were successful in killing the bill on a cloture vote late this morning. This effectively kills the bill for this session. So basically, its all over but the shouting, anger, hurt feeling, and possible political retribution. Basically all the fun stuff. Seriously though, with Congress having one of the lowest approval ratings in history, even lower than the President’s rating, is anyone surprised at the public outrage and mistrust. Is it so out of left field that the people would not trust Congress to properly handle such a massive and critical issue?
The issue of immigration should be broken down and handled in its logical parts. First, security and law enforcement, then handle the issue of employing illegals, then tackle how to handle those that are in this country. Lumping it all into 1,000 page document just plain scare the beejeezus out of us.
We said earlier that Jim DeMint was a leader on stopping the cloture vote, partly because of the video we posted earlier and also because major news outlets are saying it to:
While Menendez and a few other Democrats may oppose the bill, the main opponents have been Bush’s fellow sunbelt Republicans. GOP Sens. David Vitter of Louisiana, Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Jeff Sessions of Alabama led the charge, often backed by Texan John Cornyn.
Late Wednesday, they applauded the Senate’s refusal to reject a fairly low-key amendment that, because of parliamentary rules, left leaders no choice but to halt action until today’s showdown vote.
“They tried to railroad this through today, but we derailed the train,” DeMint said. Asked if he was poised to kill the bill today, DeMint replied, “we hope to.” The bill’s bipartisan supporters, including liberals such as Kennedy and conservatives such as Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said they would push hard to survive today’s vote. But they were frustrated by the lack of enthusiasm shown by many in the president’s party.
It remains to be seen what the fallout will be for Senator Graham who was quoted today in the NY Times saying:
“There’s racism in this debate,” Mr. Graham said. “Nobody likes to talk about it, but a very small percentage of people involved in this debate really have racial and bigoted remarks. The tone that we create around these debates, whether it be rhetoric in a union hall or rhetoric on talk radio, it can take people who are on the fence and push them over emotionally.”
In all fairness, he was referring to some folks who have been contacting his office. We don;t know what they said, but he should be careful. Most of the people out here in his backyard reject it because it was a bad bill and we don’t trust Congress to take on the whole enchilada at once (pun intended). Anyway, it is done for now. To be continued?