Marietta Daily Journal

Thursday, June 20, 2013
OPINION

D.A. King

Georgia Senators should vote ‘no’ on final cloture

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, the Democrat Senate Majority Leader, is apparently getting uncomfortable about the amnesty bill’s polling results. As this is written Wednesday morning, it looked like Reid would call for a final floor vote sometime very soon. He said he might keep the Senate working all weekend.

Why? Speed and timing are important to all hustles.

In simple terms, the deal is this: The Democrats will pretend they would actually plan do something to secure American borders and some of the Republicans will ignore 1986 and pretend that legalizing immigration crime will somehow prevent more illegal activity. And that they will win the White House in 2016 as a result. And that we can solve our unemployment crisis by importing millions of additional foreign workers.

The more the pro-enforcement Americans learn about what National Review correctly calls “Rubio’s Folly,” the more pressure they are putting on their senators to put the entire 1,000 pages into a shredder. The “Vote no!” calls and emails are now flooding into Senate offices.

To deter possible senatorial trickery, it is important to understand how the Senate voting procedure works. Before the body begins debate on any bill, it must vote to pass a “motion to proceed.” That has been done and required 60 votes. Then, to end debate, a motion called “final cloture” must also collect at least 60 votes. Only then can a final floor vote occur in which a simple majority can pass the bill (for the Obama-voter readers: there are 100 Senate seats, making 51 a majority).

Why is this notable? Because in this system, senators who want to help a bill pass, but don’t want their fingerprints on it, can vote “yes” on final cloture, thereby allowing 51 of their colleagues to vote “yes” on the actual legislation. While they then vote “no.”

“Yes” on final cloture and “no” on the actual legislation is how Georgia’s Senator Johnny Isakson voted on the unrelated gun bill earlier this year.

National Review also quantifies the replacement worker figures in the bill with this comparison: “the 2007 Bush-Kennedy proposal was rejected in part because it would have added 125,000 new guest workers. The Gang of Eight bill would add 1.6 million in the first year, and about 600,000 a year after that: That’s the population of Philadelphia in year one and the population of Boston each year after” the conservative editors warned this week.

That is in addition to the 33 million permanent immigrants the Obama-directed legislation would help add to the U.S. population in the next 10 years.

You read that correctly — “Obama-directed.” A senior White House official recently told the New Yorker magazine that “no decisions are being made without talking to us about it … this does not fly if we’re not O.K. with it.”

Example of something that “does not fly?” for Obama? Try this: On Tuesday, the Senate considered two amendments that would have required the federal government to enforce security laws already in place before granting the illegal aliens another amnesty.

One, from Sen. John Thune (R- S.D.), required the federal government to complete 350 miles of reinforced, double-layered fencing along the southwest border with Mexico before illegal aliens could be legalized. The amendment would have also required another 350 miles of fencing to be constructed before they could obtain green cards. The fencing requirement was already mandated in the Secure Fence Act of 2006. The amendment failed 39-to-54.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who claims to support a border fence, voted “no” along with the Gang of Eight Republicans.

Another amendment, from Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), would have required the federal government to complete the biometric entry/exit system at all ports of entry — including land crossings — before amnesty. Congress already mandated such a system in 1996. And five times since. Including in 2002, following the horror of 9/11. At least six of the 9/11 terrorists overstayed their visas.

The amendment failed 36-to-58.

“I-wanna-be-president” Marco Rubio said just last week that the tracking system was the “lynchpin to the whole bill.” In May, he told several news outlets he supported such a monitoring system. On Tuesday, however, along with John McCain, Lindsey Graham and the Obama Democrats, Rubio voted against the visa tracking amendment.

Got that?

Please direct all “does anybody remember 1986 or 9/11 or the American worker?” questions to both of Georgia’s Republican Senators.

They should vote “no” on allowing a final floor vote.

HERE

D.A. King is president of the Cobb-based Dustin Inman Society and a nationally recognized authority on immigration. He is not a member of any political party.