This may not say anything we don't know by now but I like to see Jeff Sessions mentioned.
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Lacking votes, immigrant bill stalls in Senate

Outcome, supported by Shelby, Sessions, seen as Bush setback
Friday, June 08, 2007
CARL HULSE and ROBERT PEAR

New York Times News Service
WASHINGTON - The sweeping immigration overhaul endorsed by President Bush was stopped cold in the Senate on Thursday night, leaving the future of one of the administration's chief domestic priorities in serious doubt.

After a day of tension and fruitless maneuvering, senators rejected a Democratic call to move toward a final vote on the compromise legislation after Republicans complained they were not given sufficient opportunity to reshape the bill.

Supporters of cutting off the debate got only 45 of the 60 votes they needed; 50 senators opposed the cutoff. Alabama's Republican Sens. Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions voted against stopping the debate.

The outcome, which followed an outpouring of criticism of the measure from core Republican voters and from liberal Democrats as well, was a significant setback for the president. It came mainly at the hands of members of his own party after he championed the measure in the hope of claiming it as a major achievement on domestic policy in the last months of his administration.

It was also a disappointment for a bipartisan group of about one dozen senators who met privately for three months to broker a compromise that tried to balance a call for stricter border enforcement with the push to find a way for many of the 12 million people who are illegally in the country to qualify for citizenship eventually.

Senate conservatives fought the legislation from the start, saying it rewarded those who broke the law by their illegal entry into the country. After winning a few important changes in the measure, Republican critics demanded more time and colleagues supported their calls for more opportunity to fight it out on the Senate floor.

Sessions was in the middle of the afternoon meltdown, objecting when backers of the bill tried to schedule votes on remaining amendments. Sessions argued for more debate time on each, at least 45 minutes, which would have extended the process by several hours.

"I can do math," Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the majority leader, responded just before the floor action halted. He said the time request was a sign that "no matter what we do, we can't move forward on this legislation."

Earlier in the day, Sessions was looking forward to dancing on the bill's grave. No amount of amendments were going to change his belief that the proposal - the product of two years of negotiations between Democrats and Republicans and the White House - should be scrapped, he said.

Sessions said the issue should be left to whoever wins the presidency in 2008." I think we need to start over again."

Reid said the critics of the bill were simply stalling and would never be satisfied. He attributed the failure of the bill to Republican recalcitrance.

"We've done more than our share," Reid said. "We've sent all the signals we can to get the president to help. It's his bill."

Reid did leave the door open to returning to the bill later this year.

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