The Associated Press reports that the Senate parliamentarian has decided that bundling the legalization of millions of immigrants here illegally into the $3.5 trillion infrastructure spending bill is out of order:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats can’t use their $3.5 trillion package bolstering social and climate programs for their plan to give millions of immigrants a chance to become citizens, the Senate’s parliamentarian said late Sunday, a crushing blow to what was the party’s clearest pathway in years to attaining that long-sought goal.
The decision by Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate’s nonpartisan interpreter of its often enigmatic rules, is a damaging and disheartening setback for President Joe Biden, congressional Democrats and their allies in the pro-immigration and progressive communities. Though they said they’d offer her fresh alternatives, MacDonough’s stance badly wounds their hopes of unilaterally enacting — over Republican opposition — changes letting several categories of immigrants gain permanent residence and possibly citizenship.
which should have surprised no one.
I support giving individuals brought here illegally as children legal status but I support doing it by democratic and legal means. I also support enforcing the law even-handedly once it has been enacted. It should be obvious to everyone that the end run the Democratic majority is attempting is none of those things.
Alternatively, the Democratic leadership secretly wanted immigration to be stripped from reconciliation to protect their majorities.
In at least partial support of your problem I think the Administration and the Congressional leadership are walking a tightrope among the progressives who are presently sucking the air out of the room, the narrowness of their majorities in both houses (they don’t even hold a majority in the Senate—with 100% support from their caucus they can pass legislation that isn’t filibustered by the vice president casting the deciding vote)m and the risks posed to those majorities by the progressives’ agenda.
Wonder who will call for VP Harris to overrule the Senate Parliamentarian or will she not when a minimum wage increase was tacked onto a covid relief bill.
The problem with being elected to restore norms violated by your predecessor is that you actually have to, you know, restore norms. Even when it interferes with what you want to do. If you don’t, how are you different from the guy you replaced?
Who would care other than to issue hurrahs and hosannas that it got included? That it would to a interesting Congressional election is probably more binding.