06/04/2013
On May 24, under the general heading of "flop sweat", I noted that Robert Menendez didn’t think they'd get 60 votes to pass the Gang Of Eight bill. Now we're seeing more stories. Menendez’s fellow Hispanic politician, Marco Rubio, feels the same way:
Marco Rubio: Immigration bill short of 60 votesBy Seung Min Kim, Politico, June 4, 2013
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) doesn’t believe the Gang of Eight immigration bill — which he authored — has enough votes to break a possible filibuster on the Senate floor.
When asked on “Fox and Friends” Tuesday whether the bill has 60 “yes” votes, Rubio replied: “No, and I think even the Democrats would concede that.”More
David M. Drucker, writing in the The Washington Examiner, notes that lots of Senators aren’t happy
Democratic and Republican sources working to build support for the bill agreed that garnering the necessary GOP votes would require amending the legislation to strengthen its border security components. Additionally, there are senators on both sides of the aisle who don’t support the current measure because of provisions other than border security who also must be appeased.The bill’s supporters are now focusing their efforts on wooing as many as five Democrats who might oppose it and about two dozen Republicans described as "gettable" or "maybes" but who for now are far from a "yes" vote. (Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is not among those targeted.) The bill is scheduled to hit the floor next Monday, and Senate Democratic leaders said it may go up for a final vote before the July 4 recess.Immigration bill lacks the 60 Senate votes needed to pass, June 3, 2013
Meanwhile, Thomas Sowell is pointing out that no one in Congress has bothered to ask what America will be getting out of this:
One of the many sad signs of our times is the way current immigration issues are discussed. A hundred years ago, the immigration controversies of that era were discussed in the context of innumerable facts about particular immigrant groups. Many of those facts were published in a huge, multi-volume 1911 study by a commission headed by Senator William P. Dillingham.
That and other studies of the time presented hard data on such things as which groups' children were doing well in school and which were not; which groups had high crime rates or high rates of alcoholism, and which groups were over-represented among people living on the dole.
Such data and such differences still exist today. Immigrants from some countries are seldom on welfare but immigrants from other countries often are. Immigrants from some countries are typically people with high levels of education and skills, while immigrants from other countries seldom have much schooling or skills.
[Abstract Immigrants, June 4, 2013]
Not only has Congress made no attempt to do anything like the Dillingham Commission, Jason Richwine was fired from the Heritage Foundation for asking the same questions that Senator Dillingham answered, all those years ago.
As Sowell goes on to point out "The very thought of formulating immigration laws from the standpoint of what is best for the American people seems to have been forgotten … "
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