The Inside Story Of What's Happening With The Immigration Bill

Yesterday, a GOP aide, who is one of my sources in the Senate, gave me the rundown on what's currently happening with the Senate immigration bill (You can see my two previous reports from this source here and here).

To begin with, the key thing to keep in mind about the upcoming vote on the Senate immigration bill is that the pro-amnesty forces have two key cloture votes that they have to win.

The first is the vote on the so-called "clay pigeon" strategy. What this does is take the original bill and all of its amendments and reintroduce it on the Senate floor as a new bill. There are two reasons for doing this. The first is to prevent killer amendments that could upset the "grand compromise" from being voted on. The second reason is procedural, because it keeps conservative Senators who are opposed to the bill from being able to slow up the process.

However, in order for the bill and the previous amendments to be offered on the floor of the Senate as a new bill, it will take the cooperation of both Democratic and Republican leadership, along with 60 votes for cloture.

The conventional wisdom has been that this first cloture vote is a done deal because the Senate leadership has been wheeling and dealing behind the scenes. The way it works is that they go to a Senator and offer to allow a vote on their Amendment IF -- and only if -- that Senator agrees to vote for cloture on the "clay pigeon" strategy.

My source tells me that this has left a sour taste in the mouth of a number of Republican Senators who are upset that Mitch McConnell is cooperating with Harry Reid to curtail the rights of Republican Senators. Moreover, there's a growing fear that a dangerous precedent is being set here that could be used against Republican Senators again and again as long as they're in the minority. After all, if the "clay pigeon" strategy is used against conservatives on the immigration issue, who's to say it won't also be used against them on any number of issues in the future? According to my source, this is causing a lot of nervousness amongst Republican Senators and it has Mitch McConnell acting very defensive behind closed doors about working with Harry Reid to roll members of his own caucus. Because of this issue, my source tells me that the vote for the "clay pigeon" strategy is no longer a slam dunk and it is possible that the "grand bargainers" may not be able to get 60 votes to put the bill on the floor as a new bill. If that turns out to be the case, the bill is dead.

Then, if the bill does make it to the floor, there will be 22 amendments offered. These amendments have been carefully selected by the combined Democratic/Republican leadership to try to make sure that no deal breakers can make it through. Still, my source tells me that every amendment has the potential to be problematic for the grand bargainers, because the vote count is very close. If certain amendments pass, it could cost votes. On the other hand, some Senators may very well decide not to vote for the bill if their amendments don't pass. But, once the votes on the amendments are through, there will be another key vote for cloture and whether it will get the 60 votes is anyone's guess at this point.

Then, of course, if they do get the 60 votes for cloture, there will be a final vote for the bill, but since only 50 votes are needed, it will be almost guaranteed to pass.

Summary: My source tells me that he thought the amnesty proponents definitely had the upper hand last week, but now, he thinks the momentum may be swinging back the other way. He also said that he thinks the best chance to stop the bill will be on the initial cloture vote. He said that he's hoping that a coalition of conservatives who think this is a bad bill, liberals who think this bill is too tough, and Republican Senators worried about losing minority rights because of the "clay pigeon" strategy will get together and block the bill. If that doesn't happen, the pro-amnesty side won't have won, but the odds will shift a bit more in their favor.

PS #1: I pointed out that John Edwards and Claire McCaskill have made some extremely negative comments about the bill and asked my source if it's possible that Democratic opposition could increase enough to kill the bill. He said it was possible, but he thought Harry Reid was capable of strong arming the Democrats enough to keep them from losing many votes. Of course, he also added that he's not sure that Harry Reid really wants to see this bill pass, so he's not sure how hard he would fight for it. Either way, he said not to count on the Democrats to finish off the bill.

PS #2: I asked him about Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss announcing that they will vote against cloture. My source's take was that it wasn't a bill killer, but that it was significant since both of them were prominent early supporters of the bill. He added that he thought their switch was indicative of the pressure Republicans are feeling at the grass roots level and he said that he thought Isakson and Chambliss deserved credit for paying attention to it while a lot of pro-amnesty supporters have tuned it out or even shut off their answering machines because they're tired of hearing their constituents complain about this issue.

PS #3: Last but not least, I talked to my source about the shots Trent Lott and Lindsey Graham have taken at people opposed to the bill. My source replied that when this whole thing started, these guys were cocky and thought they'd get this bill through with 70 votes, no problem. But now, because of the blogs and talk radio, they've lost the public debate on the issue and they know it. So, at this point, they're way out on a limb supporting a wildly unpopular bill that may or may not pass, and they're lashing out in frustration. He added that a lot of Republican Senators have been offended and embarrassed by their comments and are worried that the voters will lump them in with Graham and Lott.

“Pres. Bush keeps saying this is to protect us, but these people are coming carrying diseases that we had wiped out years ago. I just don’t trust congress or our government any more. They say one thing, but their actions don’t support their words. I’m fed up with this. Throwing money at it isn’t the answer, actions are and there have been precious few of those. This bad bill will only be a magnet for more to cross the border. I am opposed to this bill from top to bottom, and there is no way they can spin it to change my mind.”

We have become as Rome with the Senate intrested in power of votes on the Dem side and the cheap labor on the Rep side. The American people lose slowly but surely and then enemies from the outside finish the job. It took Rome about 200 years of this kind of selfishness and greed at others expense to fully catch up with them. In the information age of economic warfare, ICBM’s, nuclear barbarians this will take 20 years. Since I seemed to have noticed an acceleration of self-serving politicians in the early nineties, I would speculate our country will never be the same again within the next decade. Sure we will probably still have MacDonald’s and Paris Hilton’s at some level, but we will be working for the Chinese.

The 20th century and the emergence of cloture

In 1917 a rule allowing for the cloture of debate (ending a filibuster) was adopted by the Democratic Senate[5] at the urging of President Woodrow Wilson.[6] From 1917 to 1949, the requirement for cloture was two-thirds of those voting.

In 1946 Southern Democrats blocked a vote on a bill proposed by Dennis Chavez of New Mexico (S. 101) that would have created a permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) to prevent discrimination in the work place. The filibuster lasted weeks, and Senator Chavez was forced to remove the bill from consideration after a failed cloture vote even though he had enough votes to pass the bill. As civil rights loomed on the Senate agenda, this rule was revised in 1949 to allow cloture on any measure or motion by two-thirds of the entire Senate membership; in 1959 the threshold was restored to two-thirds of those voting. After a series of filibusters led by Southern Democrats in the 1960s over civil rights legislation, the Democrat-controlled Senate[5] in 1975 revised its cloture rule so that three-fifths of the Senators sworn (usually 60 senators) could limit debate. Changes to Senate rules still require two-thirds of Senators voting. Despite this rule, the filibuster or the threat of a filibuster remains an important tactic that allows a minority to affect legislation.

[edit] Current practice

Filibusters do not occur in legislative bodies in which time for debate is strictly limited by procedural rules. The House did not adopt rules restricting debate until 1842, and the filibuster was used in that body before that time.

In current practice, Senate Rule 22 permits procedural filibusters, in which actual continuous floor speeches are not required, although the Senate Majority Leader may require an actual traditional filibuster if he or she so chooses. This threat of a filibuster can be just as powerful as an actual filibuster.

Budget bills are governed under special rules called “reconciliation” which do not allow filibusters. Reconciliation once only applied to bills that would reduce the budget deficit, but since 1996 it has been used for all matters related to budget issues.

A filibuster can be defeated by the governing party if they leave the debated issue on the agenda indefinitely, without adding anything else to the agenda. Strom Thurmond’s attempt to filibuster the Civil Rights Act was defeated when Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson refused to refer any further business to the Senate, which required the filibuster to be kept up indefinitely. Instead, the opponents were all given a chance to speak and the matter eventually was forced to a vote.

According to a Historical Moments Essay on the U.S. Senate website, the Republican Party was the first to initiate a filibuster against a judicial nominee in 1968, forcing Democratic president Lyndon Johnson to withdraw the nomination of Associate Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas to be chief justice.

[edit] The filibuster today

In 2005, a group of Republican senators led by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), responding to the Democrats’ threat to filibuster some judicial nominees of President George W. Bush to prevent a vote on the nominations, floated the idea of eliminating filibusters on judicial nominees by declaring current Senate rules allowing such filibusters unconstitutional. Senator Trent Lott, the junior Republican senator from Mississippi, named the plan the “nuclear option.” Republican leaders later referred to the plan as the “constitutional option,” though opponents and some supporters of the plan continue to use “nuclear option.”

On May 23, 14 senators — seven Democrats and seven Republicans — led by John McCain (R-AZ) and Ben Nelson (D-NE) brokered a deal to allow three of Bush’s nominees a vote on the Senate floor while leaving two others subject to a filibuster. The seven Democrats promised not to filibuster Bush’s nominees except under “extraordinary circumstances,” while the seven Republicans promised to oppose the nuclear option unless they thought a nominee was being filibustered that wasn’t under “extraordinary circumstances.” Specifically, the Democrats promised to stop the filibuster on Priscilla Owen, Janice Rogers Brown and William H. Pryor, Jr., who had all been filibustered in the Senate before. In return, the Republicans would stop the effort to ban the filibuster for judicial nominees. “Extraordinary circumstances” was not defined in advance. The term was open for interpretation by each Senator, but the Republicans and Democrats would have had to agree on what it meant if any nominee were to be blocked. Senator John Kerry led a failed filibuster against Judge (now Justice) Alito in January 2006, calling Alito’s nomination an “extraordinary circumstance.”

This agreement expired at the end of the second session of the 109th United States Congress (ended January 3, 2007).

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