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A widely unpopular immigration reform bill? You don’t say!
Posted by Raven on June 28th, 2007
The Monster is dead. For now. I fully expect it to come back to life sooner than later. I am very proud of the members of Congress who stood up for whats right AND for not believing the President’s line of what is popular.
WASHINGTON — A defiant group of senators refused to continue down the path of a widely unpopular immigration reform bill Thursday, putting up a roadblock on a procedural debate and squeezing out any time left to work on one of President Bush’s top domestic priorities.
On the cloture vote — the test to end debate and move to passage — the Senate voted 46-53 not to carry the motion. Sixty votes were needed for forward progress.
The tally is a turnaround of 18 votes from two days earlier. For varying reasons, six Democrats and 12 Republicans changed their votes to ‘no’ from a Tuesday vote that allowed the Senate to take up amendments on the bill. No one changed their votes to ‘yes.’
Democrats who changed their votes were: Sens. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Jim Webb of Virginia.
Republicans who changed their votes were: Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and Sens. Kit Bond of Missouri, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, Susan Collins of Maine, Pete Domenici of New Mexico, John Ensign of Nevada, Lisa Murkowski and Ted Stevens of Alaska, George Voinovich of Ohio and John Warner of Virginia.
They stood up for America as well.
But we must not waver or rest on this. THE issue NEEDS to be addressed: Illegal Immigration. It’s a HUGE problem for our country and the current laws are certainly better than what Bush and Kennedy and McCain were offering; but we still need to close up the borders, punish businesses who plan and plot and use and abuse illegal workers. America must end the incentives and attractions to the parasites. I am totally convinced that many of our businesses are behind MUCH if not ALL of this PROBLEM. So I intend to write a lot about that. Including exposing those local companies who DO use illegal workers vs. my own neighbors.
And what do the losers in all this have to say?
Still, Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., who co-authored the legislation along with Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl, said the bill would live to see another day.
“The United States Senate was created just for this kind of issue. … You cannot stop the march for progress in the United States, and on this issue I have every hope and every expectation that we will ultimately be successful.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., also tried to find a silver lining.
“Even though the vote is really disheartening to me in many ways, I think as a result of this legislative work that we’ve done in the last several months, there have been friendships developed that weren’t there before,” Reid said after the vote ended.
He added that he was hopeful those friendships could be used to build coalitions to resurrect portions of the bill that the majority does want passed.
The US Senate was created to represent WE THE PEOPLE Mr. Kennedy. And people of every political side, every color, every sex, every class and every religion, were against this monster 2:1…who was representing who here?? I DO know that our voices were heard, BIG TIME, on this.
Another part to this whole damn thing, we should be SAD about:
Captain Ed:
Congress lost the trust of the people and of a significant number of its own members through its failure to act, and its failure to properly develop the bill in such a way that Senators could fix its fatal flaws…
Ed is referring to Senator Norm Coleman’s struggle with this bill- and it does represent so much of the turmoil we have all felt these past few weeks. One thing is for sure: I don’t have much faith in Congress to DO anything right for this country.
I also say: Stay Tuned. There are very powerful forces pushing this overhaul, and very determined lobbies as well. The Monster may be back.
June 28th, 2007 at 8:06 pm
Nice summary and comments. You are right, there are powerful forces at work behind the scenes here and this issue will be back. Hundreds of billons of $ are at stake to the drug cartels, Mexican government, crooked businesses in America hiring illegals, racist groups, and, sadly the corrupt US politicians working for them or pandering to them.
Money, votes, political power; all are at stake.
Please stop by and see my take on it if you have time.
Thanks again for a nice post.
LomaAlta
June 28th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
I keep going to your site and it loads up and I’ve read your post. But I can’t leave a comment because the comment pop up doesn’t load…it’s a Blogger thing. LOL.
What is at stake? The very fabric that makes America so different. I fear for our country. We won’t be able to sustain all the parasites and the MILLIONS more who will cross over in the yrs to come with warm fuzzy welcome arms (thanks to our government)…we’ll continue to lose our jobs and eventually the illegals will end up paying for future generations of illegals. NO THANKS. A nation who has lost it’s soul.