Fence me in: As Congress struggles mightily to appear to be doing the important work of legislating in the remaining weeks before the November midterm elections, the Republican Party has decided to concentrate on something easy — building a 700-mile-long fence — rather than address the challenge of comprehensive immigration reform. The message is simple: Let’s close off our borders first, then deal with the illegals who then would be trapped inside America. Yep, that message will sell very easily to the same people who still think Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11.
From the Washington Times:
“It’s time to secure the border with Mexico,” Majority Leader Bill Frist said [Monday] night before filing the parliamentary motions to force the House-passed bill onto the Senate floor in a final effort to get a major immigration bill on the president’s desk before the elections.
‘Mr. Frist was for comprehensive reform before he was against it’
— Jim ManleyJim Manley, a spokesman for Minority Leader Harry Reid, said the move “smacks of desperation” and was a “clear repudiation of President Bush’s call for comprehensive legislation.”
The Secure Fence Act of 2006, which was easily approved by the House last week, contains none of the “comprehensive” measures that President Bush, Democrats and some Senate Republicans have demanded. Those include provisions to grant citizenship rights to about 10 million illegal aliens living in the country and a guest-worker program that would usher hundreds of thousands more foreign laborers into the U.S.
“Mr. Frist was for comprehensive reform before he was against it,” Mr. Manley said.
On the Senate floor [Monday] night, Mr. Frist said he still supports comprehensive immigration reform legislation. But, he said, because no consensus can now be reached on other issues, Congress should move ahead with border security. It’s not “enforcement only,” he said, but “enforcement first.”
This will be the second time the Senate has debated an enforcement bill. The first died a stalemately death when all but two Democrats and 20 Republicans refused to even debate it. Now, there’s a triumverate of senior GOP senators that looks good for derailing the current effort to swap out a fence for comprehensive reform: John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John W. Warner of Virginia.
Those three senators also are bucking the GOP party line on the president’s call for expanded illegal detention and interrogation without representation for the Guantanamo detainees. Frist’s move to file a cloture motion Monday night to limit debate and prohibit amendments to the bill means the three Repug renegades may have to fight a two-front battle in the Senate this week, as Frist is aiming to get the immigration — excuse me, fence-building permit — passed on the Senate floor by week’s end and then sent on to the guy who likes to build fences, not mend them, to sign before the midterms.
When the House last year approved its border-security legislation, it included almost exactly the same fencing provisions. The fence came to symbolize what many Democrats said was an unforgiving bill. They said the fence proved that Republicans harbored a hostility toward immigrants.
But last week, the stand-alone fence bill was approved 283-138, with support from more than 20 Democrats and a handful of Republicans who dropped opposition to the earlier fence proposal.
Still, most Democrats are adamantly opposed to the fence bill, calling it a new “Berlin Wall” and an election-year “gimmick” intended to portray them as weak on security measures. In addition, internal Republican polling has found that immigration is as powerful a motivator for voters as any issue with which Congress is grappling.
“They’re obviously done with legislating for the year,” Mr. Manley said. “Now, they’re just playing to their base.”
Indeed. The question is, how will the Democratic base respond to watching Dem leaders doing their typical hand-wringing and crying foul over such an obvious late-season political ploy.
