Senate Debating Immigration Bill They Haven't Read Yet;
Vote Slated for 5:30
Voting Begins

Tom Coburn on now, rejecting the bill.

Voting Now. The outcome is foreordained. The Amenstias' goal is to get to 70 votes, in order to better pressure the House that "the public has spoken and it's suddenly kookoo for Amnesty."

Meanwhile, Mickey Kaus puts it like this:

I’ve been trying to think of the right metaphor for the giant Corker-Hoeven amendment, the one that is reportedly giving the Gang of 8′s immigration bill enough votes to pass the Senate. Sure, it’s a fig leaf–but a fig leaf is usually something insignificant-yet-real. This is something grandiose that’s a fraud.

The best I can come up with is this: A man comes into your restaurant. You recognize him–he’s a guy who ate a $100 meal last year and said he’d pay later, but he stiffed you. Now he’s back and wants another meal on credit. He senses you are wary and makes a new offer. “This time I’ll pay you … $2 million! How can you refuse? It’s 2 million dollars!”

You get the idea. Just try and collect.

Likewise the escalating promises from the Amnestias.

We keep asking them for enforcement first. We ask for enforcement first because we know we will not have enforcement second. They didn't want enforcement before; why would they suddenly give us enforcement when they don't need us anymore?

So now they just keep promising to increase the money they claim they'll be throwing at the problem.

But we don't want more promises; we want some already performed action. We want already-performed action because that's the only promise we know they'll keep -- a fact that's already occurred.

And they keep refusing.

Because they have no intent of performing the action. They don't want it performed. In exchange, they'll offer us promises of performance. Which they all-but-admit they have no intention of honoring.

So let's enjoy our compromise.

Hall of Shame: Tester, Rubio, Graham, McCain, Corker, Hoeven, Collins (of course).

Those are just the ones I think I heard. Don't consider the list complete or accurate.

Incidentally, check out some of these corrupt deals struck to gain votes. Collins had a provision stricken which had specified that 90% of all spending on border security must be directed towards the Southern border; she had that stricken so that Maine could enjoy some unneeded pork spending to keep the Canucks out.

So you know they're serious about this border security business.

Voting No: Borasso, Blunt, Burr, Coburn, Crepo, Cruz, Fischer, Grassley, Johanss, Johnson of Wisconsin, McConnell, Thune, Toomey, Vitter, Inhofe. Again, just some names I've heard thusfar.

posted by Ace at 04:50 PM

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