Thursday, June 7, 2007

Illegal Immigration 9: Thursday's events

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Dem, NV) is likely to invoke cloture on the shamnesty bill today, which means he'll force a vote on it in its current form.

This is a bit of a strange move, given that there are still many amendments that have yet to be debated (including one about the right of illegal aliens to vote), and that there is no guarantee that he'll get the 60 votes needed to make it happen. If he gets 60 votes on the cloture motion, the Senate will drop everything and vote on the shamnesty bill in its current form. If he doesn't get the 60 votes for cloture, it is likely he'll shelve the shamnesty bill for the time being, which will essentially kill it.

Either way, it's probably going to be a squeaker.

If it does pass in the Senate, the shamnesty bill will then go to the House of Representatives, where the debate and amendment process will be similar to what happened in the Senate. If it passes in the House, then a committee will have to reconcile the differences between the Senate and House versions, and then it would go to the President's desk.

In my humble opinion, I think he's doing this because the longer this shamnesty bill stays in the public light, the more people become outraged about it, and the heat is being cranked up on Senators across the nation to kill this bill. There's still a pretty good chance of getting it slipped through at this point, but the longer he waits, the more his support for this shamnesty bill erodes. We'll see what happens today, but if you want to make your opinions known, you'd better call your Senators today!

There's my two cents.

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