This was just published today as a response to the debate going on in the senate- particularly with the DREAM Act and Ag Jobs.... where do we go now?
http://www.ocregister.com/news/reid-bill-amendment-1786693-senate-spending
Border security proposal doesn't fly
Senators reject GOP attempt to add enforcement measures to spending bill.
WASHINGTON – For a few hours on Wednesday, the immigration debate was back on the floor of the Senate. And the result was the same: nothing happened.
The Senate refused to act on a Republican amendment to the Homeland Security spending bill that would have added $3 billion for border security and made changes in immigration enforcement policy. And because of the objections of one senator, lawmakers were also blocked from just adding the money without amending policy.
The amendment, authored by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., was an attempt by the GOP to enact the part of the immigration bill the Senate rejected last month that they say the public wants most.
"Border security is the gate that you must pass through to get overall comprehensive reform,'' said Graham, who was one of the original senators pushing for a broad overhaul.
Democratic leaders were scrambling after the Republican senators announced their proposal. The leadership did not want to put its members in the position of having to vote against border security. But there were parts of Graham's amendment that Democrats could not accept, such as mandatory jail time for people who crossed the border illegally after having once been deported.
At one point, Majority Leader Harry Reid offered an amendment to Graham's amendment that would have tacked on the Ag Jobs guest worker and legalization plan and the DREAM Act.
But in the end, Reid used a procedural maneuver to sideline the Republican amendment as well as his addition to it. He objected to the amendment because its provisions, he said, would be making legislative policy on a spending bill, something the Senate does not do.
The Senate voted 52-44 on that procedural vote. It would have taken 60 votes to make it possible to vote on the Republicans' measure.
Then Reid tried to get just the $3 billion added to the spending bill, something that would have been problematic since the spending bill is already larger than President Bush's request and the White House has threatened a veto.
But Reid was not successful because Sen. Jon Cornyn, R-Texas, objected.
"I'm very sorry that there will not be the money for border security but that's the way it is,'' Reid said.
Cornyn objected to just adding the money because he wanted to include a crackdown on people who overstay their visas in the list of items eligible for the $3 billion in new spending.
Minutes after it became clear that once again action on anything having to do with immigration was impossible, Sens. Larry Craig, R-Id., and Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., gave impassioned pleas for action on the Ag Jobs bill.
"Agriculture is in crisis,'' Feinstein shouted at her colleagues. "We have a $45 billion industry'' whose labor force is down by 30 percent. "Farmers are renting land in Mexico. What will happen to the land in California and Idaho and other places? It will lie fallow.''
Reid told Feinstein he was sympathetic to the needs of agriculture and would try to find a way to get Ag Jobs passed this year.
Feinstein asked Reid if he'd agree to try and add it to the farm bill, expected to come before the Senate in September. Reid said he would.
Contact the writer: (202) 628-6381 or dbunis@ocregister.com
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