Thread: Whipping from a Senate Source

Monday, June 25, 2007

Whipping from a Senate Source [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

http://corner.nationalreview.com/

we think there are over 30 in the "no" category, but there is a lot of movement. White House thinks they have 60 votes to invoke cloture. They may, it's not clear. But it's much closer than they wish to admit.

Likely Republicans that are on the fence or undecided: Bond, Hatch, Burr, Coleman, Brownback, Ensign, Warner, Cochran, Collins, Snowe, Domenici, Murkowski, Stevens...
(Gregg is lost cause on motion to proceed).

Democrats that should be good but who are wobbly - McCaskill, Webb, Tester, Pryor, Landrieu, Dorgan, Baucus, Bingaman (supposedly traded vote for something).

IF cloture is invoked tomorrow with, say, 35 votes against (ballpark guess at this point) - that will be a sizable demonstration of momentum against the bill, and there still will remain 48 hours before the NEXT cloture vote... the one on the bill itslef (Thursday AM). What happens in between is still not clear due to the weird procedural move (Clay Pigeon) by the Majority Leader - with help from the grand bargainers... but one thing is certain - the heat will be intense during that time...

06/25 05:16 PM



KUDOS FOR CORNYN [Kate O'Beirne]

This afternoon Senator John Cornyn made the case against cloture on the Senate floor. Few Senators have worked harder on the issue of immigration reform than the former Texas attorney general and after making powerful arguments on the manifest weaknesses of the compromise bill, he explains what is so wrong about the process that will be played out beginning tomorrow. In doing so, he highlights the kind of amendments the compromisers dare not allow to be considered:

"I continue to hope that we can pass meaningful, safe immigration reform. Everyone knows that our immigration system is broken, and I would like to see it fixed. This bill does not do it.

Finally, one of the biggest problems we have had with this legislation centers around the way that it has been handled. Written behind closed doors, this bill did not even see the light of a committee room. Instead, it proceeded promptly to the floor of the Senate. The short term result was predicable: Senators offered numerous amendments, many of them including important improvements which might have been most appropriately dealt with in the committee process.

The majority leader’s frustration led to that bill being pulled after almost two weeks on the Senate floor. Now, a new bill is back. Instead of learning from our mistakes, the bill has once again been secretly negotiated, and will once again forgo the committee process.

What’s worse, we’ve been told that it will be presented to us with bipartisan amendments already chosen by a select few negotiators, unrepresentative of the wide variety of strongly held views in the Senate.

There are a list of Amendments which I believe ought to be included in this bill, amendments that I think may find support from many of my colleagues. Provisions, Mr. President, such as one which would prevent criminal aliens from delaying and even avoiding their deportation by filing frivolous Z Visa applications and appeals against their denied applications.

Another amendment would prohibit criminal aliens, including gang members and absconders, from tying up our courts by frivolous appeals from the denial of a request for a waiver of grounds for removal. The bottle neck, sure to ensue without these two provisions, will cause extensive delays that will only increase the costs involved with this bill, and allow abuse of the system.

A third would require judges to consider national security implications before issuing nationwide injunctions against immigration enforcement, an essential provision to protecting our border, something this bill claims to do.

I would like to add an amendment preventing those who have committed terrorist acts or aided terrorists from asserting “good moral character,â€

Hannity thanks that the fix is in. that once again Senate leaders are using our tax dollars to by votes. they are allowing those senators who vote for the bill will get to have more earmarks than those who oppose the bill.

We need a to stop the earmark process. Our Congressional representatives should not be using taxpayers hard earned money to buy votes that for bills that hurt america and americans. It is time to send all pro-amnesty senators home as soon as possible and start working on the next generation not to have earmarks. Remember that we are borrowing money from China to keep our government going. Why do we want to have earmarks when they cost us.

the transportation bill is 75% earmarks, instead of allowing and requiring DOT to build an overall nation-wide plan for repair and upgrade of roads. We piece meal everything with earmarks.