Where was Barack Obama? The moment was perfect last week for the Illinois senator and champion of bipartisanship to step forward and help save the compromise immigration bill from a premature death. All he needed to do was switch his vote to oppose an amendment whose passage was going to shatter the Senate coalition that negotiated the bill. By switching, Obama would have substantiated his claim to be a politician eager to reach across the partisan aisle and end the bitter polarization in Washington. But Obama was not heard from. A day later, with the deliberations on the bill in turmoil, Senate majority leader Harry Reid yanked it off the Senate floor. Obama voted with Reid on cloture, which failed, prompting the shutdown.
It may be unfair to single out Obama for backing a so-called poison pill that would have weakened the proposed temporary worker program (by terminating it after five years). Obama wasn’t alone. Two Democratic presidential candidates–Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden–voted with him, as did Reid, Chuck Schumer, and Dick Durbin, Reid’s colleagues in the Senate Democratic leadership. What made Obama’s vote different was his hypocrisy. The others are hard-core partisans. Obama professes in speeches and his bestselling book, The Audacity of Hope, to rise above crass party interests. Not this time.
The press attributes the collapse of the “grand bargain” on immigration reform to Republicans: the senators who declined to limit debate, President Bush, the angry conservative base, and Republican senator Jim DeMint, who emerged as a leading opponent of the bill. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell did indeed ask that more Republican amendments be allowed, requiring several more days of debate. Reid refused. Bush, however, was scarcely a factor. The base? DeMint was its agent, and a clever and opportunistic one at that.
But Reid was the dark figure in the immigration drama. After halting consideration of the bill, he told two maudlin stories about illegal Hispanic immigrants he’d encountered in Nevada. Then he insisted he really wanted to pass the bill. “I have every desire to complete this legislation,” Reid said. He had a funny way of showing it. A pro-reform senator said Democratic senator Ted Kennedy had been “dragging Reid along”–a reluctant Reid–on the immigration issue for weeks.
Reid astonished the senators who drafted the bill by blaming Bush for its demise. Surely he knew better. “This is the president’s bill,” he declared. “Where are the president’s men? Where are the president’s people helping us with these votes?” In truth, the Bush administration was invited to join the negotiating sessions at which an immigration compromise was reached–but days after the talks had begun. Bush had little influence. The bill was the bipartisan product of a dozen senators.
While stubbornly opposed to McConnell’s demand to bring up more Republican amendments, Reid let a deal-breaking amendment by Senator Byron Dorgan be voted on twice. It would sunset the guest-worker program and was strongly backed by organized labor. The amendment was defeated, 48 to 49, before the Memorial Day congressional recess, and then was voted on again last week. It passed, 49 to 48.
Republican backers of the bill said they were partly responsible for having allowed the amendment a second vote. But all they could do once the vote came was label it a poison pill, meaning that its passage would shatter the bill’s delicate compromise and jeopardize its passage. Yet Reid voted for it, along with Obama.
Reid will have a chance to revive the bill this week when McConnell, Kyl, and other Republicans present him with a reduced list of a dozen or so amendments. They’ll ask for two or three extra days of debate, then a final vote. Approval may depend on dropping both the Dorgan amendment and a successful amendment by Republican senator John Cornyn that angered Democrats. But nothing can happen unless Reid calls up the bill again. The fate of immigration reform is entirely in Reid’s hands.
It was the Dorgan amendment on which DeMint played a pivotal role. Unlike his South Carolina colleague, Lindsey Graham, DeMint is dead set against the immigration reform bill. He has promised to stage a filibuster to block it. Until the immigration debate, DeMint had operated in Graham’s shadow. Now he’s a hero of the conservative movement.
By switching their votes on the Dorgan amendment, DeMint, Republican senators Jim Bunning, Elizabeth Dole, and Mike Enzi, and Democratic senator Bob Menendez tipped the balance. Only four senators had switched the other way, from aye to nay on the amendment. The nays were one vote short.
Obama was a late addition to the group of senators who had met regularly for three months to draft the bill. But he managed to get two minor changes into the bill. As one of the “grand bargainers,” if only briefly, Obama was tacitly obligated to support the compromise. At least Graham thought so.
Nevertheless, Obama proposed last week to put the new merit-based system for selecting immigrants on trial for five years, rather than make it permanent. This struck at a critical part of the compromise for Republicans. And Graham rose in furious disagreement on the Senate floor, all but calling Obama a phony with his sweet talk of bipartisanship.
“Bipartisanship is music to the American people’s ears. When you are out on the campaign trail, you are trying to bring us all together. You are trying to make America better. Why can’t we work together?” said Graham. “This is why we can’t work together–because some people, when it comes to the tough decisions, back away.”
Graham said Obama’s amendment would take the “bi” out of bipartisanship and kill the compromise. The amendment lost, 55 to 42.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
