Immigration Bill Is Put to the Test With Early Vote
Senate Defeat of a Proposal Seems to Suggest Coalition For Change Is Still Holding
By SARAH LUECK
WASHINGTON -- The Senate resumed debate over immigration, and early action on the bill suggests that a bipartisan coalition supporting broad changes in immigration laws is holding together.
Senators voted 55-40 against a proposal to require tightening of border security before allowing undocumented workers to become citizens. Supporters, like Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas), called it an attempt to "do first things first," but critics, who want to see a more balanced approach with tighter border security and new guest-worker programs, said the amendment would have gutted the legislation.
Far from breaking neatly along party lines, the vote showed the volatile nature of the immigration issue. Seven Democrats, including several from North Dakota, Oregon and other states, voted with Republicans to tackle security issues first. Eighteen Republicans rejected the amendment.
Supporters of the underlying Senate bill, which would increase border security, create new guest-worker programs and legalize the status of millions of undocumented workers, said the vote was an encouraging sign. But battles remain as the Senate considers a raft of amendments before its self-imposed Memorial Day deadline.
"It tells me that we won one; that's all it tells me," said Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.).
Also last night, the Senate refused to kill a guest-worker program for future immigrants, and then accepted a provision capping the number of guest workers at 200,000 a year. The Senate also voted to increase the number of border agents by 1,000. And the Congressional Budget Office released its most complete analysis to date of the Senate bill's impact.
CBO said federal spending for benefit programs such as food stamps and Medicaid would increase by $54 billion over the next decade. At the same time, CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation estimate revenue would grow by $66 billion, chiefly because of increased tax collections. CBO said costs would grow further -- by about $64 billion through 2016 -- if Congress fully funds ambitious goals in the bill, such as increasing federal personnel at the borders and providing grants to state governments.
CBO said the bill would add about eight million people to the U.S. population in the next decade. Critics of the legislation, however, have said the impact would be far greater in the long term.
Even as the Senate bill advances, its supporters are bracing for a nasty struggle with the more conservative House that passed a bill last year tightening border security without extending citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants already in the country. A day after President Bush urged Congress to quickly pass an immigration bill, Republican House leaders were cool to his support of extending citizenship to at least some of the illegal immigrants already in the U.S.
As a practical matter, there is little hope of any deal between the chambers before November's congressional election. "It's reality," said one leadership aide. "We passed the immigration bill that we could pass in the House. We'd like to do more, but we can't without Democratic support and that can't happen before November."
Rep. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican who is sympathetic to the Senate approach, said some Republicans, too, "think it's a better issue if we just talk about it and don't do it."
Congress will almost certainly be returning for a lame-duck session after the election, and that could be the best moment for the White House to try to strike a deal. Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's political adviser, was set to meet with House Republicans this morning.
"The president is moving to get the politics right on this," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg (R., N.H.), who remains optimistic that a bill will yet emerge from Congress. "I think a lame duck session could lend itself to a deal."
A White House official didn't rule out the prospect that House-Senate talks would run past November, in part because of the complexity of the issues raised: "This bill is going to take a long time to conference...Even if everyone was on the same page it would be hard to draft this bill."