Reid invokes cloture on Gang of Eight bill, says Ted Kennedy's smiling down or something

Looks like the cloture vote’s on Monday with the fait-accompli final vote on the bill later in the week. For the moment Schumer claims that they don’t have 70 votes, but they’ll get there. Or they’ll get close. Either way, amnesty fans are going to get this through the Senate.

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Friday that his chamber will hold a procedural vote on the border-security agreement crafted by Republican Sens. Bob Corker of Tennessee and John Hoeven of North Dakota on Monday at 5:30 p.m…

“Nothing in this amendment or the bill satisfies anyone completely, but together, the amendment and the bill provides a sturdy craft that will weather the upcoming storms we face and get us finally to our long-desired port — comprehensive immigration reform signed into law,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a leader of the Gang of Eight that wrote the original legislation.

A source on the Hill tells me that he thinks Reid will file Corker/Hoeven together with the rest of the Gang of Eight bill as a substitute amendment so that they can pass the whole thing by next Friday and then send it all to the House. Supposedly Reid has also “filled the tree” with amendments, which means no other amendments that might serve as poison pills for the larger bill will be allowed on the floor. He means to pass this, the sooner the better, with as little static as possible.

How do you get to 70 votes here? The same way they got to 60 on ObamaCare: With bribes for the fencesitters.

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According to Senate aides close to the discussions, the Corker-Hoeven amendment is now expected to contain special interest provisions designed to secure the votes of various U.S. Senators. Aides have told Breitbart News that those writing the Corker-Hoeven amendment “is going to be filled with kickbacks and buyoffs.”

Vitter stressed this concern. “I’ll be going through the text, but there may be some Obamacare-style buyoffs included in the language. We must ensure that real enforcement is in place, working, verified BEFORE any amnesty happens.”

Every time I’ve sat down to write an immigration post today, a new story about fraud, duplicity, or subterfuge from the pro-amnesty crowd flitters across my RSS reader. Did you think Senate Democrats were driving a hard bargain on Cornyn’s border-security amendment? Not true: Obama, who’s taking a hands-off approach towards the bill for public appearances, is the one who declared Cornyn’s bill a dealbreaker behind the scenes. Did you believe Marco Rubio’s office when they said that O’s not “engaging Congress” on this? Not true: In fact, Obama’s immigration team has been advising both sides on “technical details” from its suite of offices in the Dirksen Building. Did you think one of the big problems with Cornyn’s amendment was that it was too expensive, as John McCain and his pal Chuck Schumer claimed? Not true: The Corker/Hoeven amendment is destined to be even more expensive, but they’re okay with that one because the border security targets it provides are softer than Cornyn’s. Did you think that Dean Heller was a border hawk given his strong anti-amnesty stand in the 2012 Nevada Senate campaign? Not true: Like Marco Rubio, he switched from border enforcer to amnesty broker virtually the moment he was safely elected. He lied to conservatives’ faces for his own political gain, and then betrayed them immediately for further political gain. Just like Rubio.

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It takes a lot to get a candy-ass RINO like me to start pounding the table about primaries, but there’s no other recourse. If a candidate ran as one thing in order to get elected and then immediately started governing as something else, then he holds his office on false pretenses. He shouldn’t be allowed to hold it after this term is up. Primarying these guys who ran as border hawks and who then rushed to make an amnesty deal is the only proper punishment for fraud. And if they make it through the primary, the only recourse then is to stay home for the general. As painful as it may be to see a Democrat get elected, there needs to be some sort of electoral reprisal for this degree of deceit and contempt for constituents. Are people willing to follow through on that? The answer for 95 percent of critics of this bill will be “no” because, when push comes to shove, McCain and Heller and Rubio are all preferable to a Democrat. But that other five percent can make something happen. Nothing else will stop this. Lying this brazenly to get elected can’t go on.

Exit quotation:

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Ed Morrissey 10:00 PM | November 22, 2024
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