Posted on 03/25/2010 4:16:58 PM PDT by presidio9
Sen. Lindsey Graham has long been a thoughtful and constructive legislator. But the South Carolina Republican made a statement last week that showed why Washington is losing the public's trust and his party in particular is losing its sense of duty.
Graham had joined with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to present a well-reasoned outline for immigration reform that, while not as historic as the health care bill just passed, may have as much impact on who we are as a country.
Then Graham threatened to walk away from his own proposal. "If the health care bill goes through this weekend, that will, in my view, pretty much kill any chance of immigration reform passing the Senate this year," he said.
Republican legislators don't have a monopoly on cynically putting politics over policy. But seldom has it been done so baldly and to such an extreme by an entire party. Republicans in the House and the Senate have united in petulance after losing the health care vote to openly refuse to work with Democrats on the many crucial issues facing a country at war and reeling from a near knockout recession.
Either immigration reform, for example, needs to be done, or it doesn't. Graham thought it did. Nearly 11 million immigrants are in this country without legal authorization or protection. What then justifies Graham walking away from a resolution, as much as he might be understandably angry over health reform?
Similarly, unemployment is still close to 10%. The financial system is still fragile. American soldiers are still dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran is still trying to build a nuclear bomb.
At some point, politics must end and responsibility must begin. We elect our leaders to work together to wrestle with all the difficult challenges facing the country, not to act like the spoiled playground kid who takes his ball and goes home because he didn't like a call.
The conventional wisdom in recent days has been to say that President Obama sacrificed the possibility of bipartisanship to push through health reform. But there is a flip side to the coin. Who says that the Republicans are now warranted, out of pique, to sacrifice the welfare of the nation on these other issues?
Obama was rightfully criticized over the past year for seeming so focused on health care that he wasn't publicly addressing jobs and the economy enough. Now the Republican leaders in the House and the Senate, ironically, are vowing to do the reverse.
Financial regulation, for example, has come down to mostly technical differences for the great majority of Americans and legislators. Even Alan Greenspan, the libertarian former chairman of the Federal Reserve, has joined other former Wall Street architects of the current failed system to call for greater government regulation.
Yet Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, has imposed party discipline on what should be a nonpartisan issue. The Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee a week ago filed more than 200 amendments to the current financial reform bill as a harassing tactic, then switched strategy Monday to withdraw the amendments and offer none that might show their input.
If the Republicans can drag the media into focusing only on the politics of party fights, then maybe the voters won't notice such hypocritical frivolity. But this doesn't make it right.
Oddly, so much of the legislation the Republicans now oppose is built on their ideas, a reflection of how Washington has moved so far to the right since the 1960s.
Take immigration. The Graham-Schumer proposal - which Obama and Democratic leaders say they can support - is heavy on enforcement and includes a temporary worker program that businesses want but Democratic constituencies such as unions, liberal churches and humanitarian organizations are suspicious of.
The proposal builds on the tough and increasingly effective enforcement that the Obama administration has continued from the Republican administration of President George W. Bush. Graham and Schumer add a true innovation: a tamper-proof, biometric Social Security card that would be issued to all Americans.
A way to effectively halt future flows of illegal immigrants would thus be possible. Those unauthorized immigrants already here would be offered earned legalization, also supported by Republican-leaning businesses and evangelical churches. Only a populist minority opposes.
An immigration deal is in sight. Will the congressional Republicans hammer it out? Or will they stay on their denial warpath?
edward.schumachermatos@yahoo.com
LOL ... Just stealing the jobs Americans used to have.
Screw you, lib.
Protection?
Our government should be protecting citizens from the illegal invasion — not protecting the invaders!
Edward Schumacher-Matos, a former editor and reporter with The New York Times and Wall Street Journal with extensive experience in Florida and Latin America, writes pieces every other Sunday taking up issues in the news, answering questions from readers and critiquing how The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald handle topics of significance.
High unemployment is the perfect time to inject more workers who will work for less money into the marketplace. (/sarc)
Yeah..like a castrated sheep is thoughtful and constructive.
So, Graham has, maybe, come to his senses. We’ll see. By the way where’s McCain on this...oh yea, he needs to fool his voters again for re-election. He’ll get back to his ways next year...maybe even switch parties.
Best that people who need a visa return home to get one.
BTW, to be an "immigrant" you must have a visa to immigrate.
Who's freakin fault is that? We had 11 million people BREAK THE LAW, and you want to pass more laws for them to break, while absolving them of their initial crimes.
If you want to be a citizen of this country, go home and get at the BACK OF THE LINE. Otherwise, STFU.
Not only steal our jobs but require us to have a National ID to boot that must be validated before getting hired. The proverbial of “mother may I” before going to work. In this case, mother is the gov’t. I don’t like the idea of having to get permission from the gov’t before I do something such as earn a living.
It doesn't need to be done. It was done in 1986 and that was supposed to have cleaned up the problem and started strict law enforcement. All it did was invite even more to enter the US illegally to wait for the next amnesty.
Screw the amnesty and start enforcing the law or the same mistake will be repeated again, and in twenty more years the problem will be even bigger.
He has been a legislator who betrayed his constituents, his country and his religion.
He is despicable and now will be de-elected.He cannot disappear fast enough.
His collegial, across the aisle approach is naive and stuopid, he does not realize that his dem colleagues are fascists. Stupid he is. Very , very stupid.
Earned legalization?!!!
So if you're not caught by the Border Patrol, you've earned citizenship?!!!
“High unemployment is the perfect time to inject more workers who will work for less money into the marketplace. (/sarc)”
IBM is importing them by the boatload.
You have to give libs some points for chutzpah, if nothing else.
Immigration reform to them would mean millions more democrat voters and an end to any chance of Conservatives winning back the government in 2010 and 2012.
We would be absolutely flat-lined, brain-dead, room temperature, bowling ball FRIGGING STUPID to give them a single millimeter on this or any other issue!!!
Most especially after the way they trick-phucked the entire nation on this “health care” scam.
Forget bipartisanship. This is as close to civil war as we can get without resorting to violence and you do NOT make deals with the enemy.
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“Sen. Lindsey Graham has long been a thoughtful and constructive legislator...”
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That comment was enough to stop any further reading.
The 30+ million illegals here do not deserve anything but prosecution. Graham deserves the same.
>> Edward Schumacher-Matos: “Or will they stay on their denial warpath?”
Denial?
>> “Those unauthorized immigrants already here would be offered earned legalization,”
Denial!
I am now hearing several different versions of this argument from the liberals I work with here in NY. The crux of it is this: “You didn’t want health care, but we passed it fair and square. Like it or not, it is now law for the rest of time. If you refuse to forget about it and try to obstruct the rest of our agenda, the voters are eventually going to blame you, the party of “no,” when the economy doesn’t revive itself.”
The problem with that, of course, is that the bill was certainly not passed fairly. It remains to be seen wether it was even passed legally, but it was passed in opposition to the polls and every Republican. The Democrats wanted it that way, which is why they never once sought our input. Now, they find themselves in a position of not being able to legalize any more of their agenda without our help. This could be the last bill Obama signs when he leaves office in three years. I’m sure some Republicans like Graham will do everything they can to make sure that doesn’t happen, but I know most of the people who hang around this website hope it does.
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