Reid and Frist Reach Agreement On Immigration Reform Bill

by Steve

Bill Frist and Harry Reid just reached agreement on getting the immigration reform bill out of the Senate and over to the House. Reid's insistence and that of Arlen Specter, that the Senate negotiators come from the Judiciary Committee was largely agreed to by Frist today, in exchange for letting amendments come to the floor and be voted on, amendments that John McCain and Ted Kennedy weren't worried about.

As I said before, this is a no-lose situation for Dems, who no matter what, can now say they got a good bill that represented the wishes of a large majority of Americans (per the CBS News/NYT poll) out of the Senate and over to the House. Even if the House sandbags this bill into their draconian version, and it gets out of Congress onto Bush's desk, it becomes his headache. He either vetoes it and pisses off conservatives, or he signs it and loses Catholics and latinos this fall.

While the GOP toils on this, Democrats can say "we did the right thing. If you elect more of us this fall, we'll fix this next year when we come back into power."