Mike Smith, writing for the AP, has more on the House Republicans’ walkout over parliamentary shenanigans associated with the immigration bill. The way I see it, the House Republicans tried to get a little too cute – attempting the very rare, and rarely successful, stunt of filing a minority committee report; and Bauer figured out a way to burn them on it. Now they’re pissed.
To recap – Sen. Delph got his immigration bill through the Senate. It would have penalized employers for employing illegal aliens. It would have had effects that I find objectionable, but it wasn’t entirely unreasonable. It went to the House where it was tweaked in committee in ways that Sen. Delph probably didn’t entirely care for, but his bill was still recognizable as amended by the committee report. In the normal course of business, the majority committee report would have been adopted and then the amended bill would have been open for further amendments on the floor of the House. Instead, the House Republicans offered a minority committee report that went far beyond addressing the issue of illegally employing immigrants without proper documentation. The House Democrats retaliated by taking Delph’s bill, as reported out of committee, and offering it as an amendment to another bill having to do with employer-employee relations; doing so at the last minute to block House Republicans from amending Delph’s immigrant employment language. The House Republicans probably had reasonable ways in which they wanted to try to amend the immigrant employment language but got caught with their pants down playing games with other immigration issues. Now they look bad, and they’re angry about it.
None of this is serving the public very well — the gamesmanship on both sides is jeopardizing a bill I don’t care much for personally, but which isn’t completely beyond the pale. If I were an implacable opponent of Delph’s bill, I’d be really happy with the House Republicans right now. They were more interested in having the political issue of immigration to run on in the elections than in trying to pass illegal employment legislation and, as a result, the legislation is in peril and the House Republicans look bad. To be sure, the House Democrats don’t look great either, but despite what I tell my kids, “He started it” actually does have some persuasive force.
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