Mixed Signals

On the one hand, every fact and bit of analysis that comes out about the Bush-McCain-Kennedy immigration amnesty bill further exposes what an absolute pile it is:

The CBO estimates only go out 20-years: A Heritage Foundation analyst did a back-of-envelope estimate of the present value of future Social Security costs for legalizing current illegal immigrants, whose average age would bring them to retirement in about thirty years, of $2.5 trillion over eighteen years of retirement, or about $139 billion per year. If even half that, due to greater than expected return of illegals to their home country and inability to qualify for legal status, it’s a substantially larger fiscal impact – on an already insolvency headed program – than any of the others. Other entitlement and social service programs for the elderly or ill would also be impacted in the future, as the normalized immigrants age.

Adequate Enforcement Appears Underestimated: Critics of the Bill contend, based on both experience and upon the measures in the Bill as it stands, that the costs of adequate enforcement are seriously underestimated. For example, an increase of Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators by 200 annually over the 2008-2010 period, of 100 annually over the 2008-2012 period of Citizenship and Immigration Services personnel to adjudicate applications, and by 200 annually for investigators assigned to combat alien smuggling over the 2008-2012 period, in the face of enormously increased demands, in an already overburdened system, are clearly inadequate. Similarly, given practical experience with huge cost-over-runs constructing large-scale, complex computer systems, the roughly $6 billion estimated for an eligibility verification system will likely be substantially exceeded. The costs of adequate enforcement personnel would, also, expand the costs by many billions....Skeptics are properly exercised by expectations of large future flows of illegal immigrants from undermanned and underfunded enforcement within the present Bill. [emphases added]

On the other hand, it should be no surprise to anybody that the selling pitch mustered by the bills proponents is a matching load:

As I understand it, the ultimate argument of Republican proponents of the Kyl-Kennedy deal is: "Even if you don't like this, think how much worse it would be if it were passed in 2009 when we'll probably have a Democratic Congress and a Democratic president."

That argument makes two dubious assumptions: (1) that this deal could get much worse; and (2) that it can ever be a good thing to have Republican fingerprints on this atrocity. I agree with David Frum - if another amnesty, the biggest one yet, is "inevitable" - which it isn't - let the Democrats push it through the legislative tract all by their lonesome, and the public anger be focused solely upon them. Besides, why should they care? They may take a short-term hit - Frum's reference to a GOP congressional comeback in 2012 - but in the long term all twelve million current illegals, and the millions more this bill would attract, will all be given the vote, probably by that same GOP Congress that'll be bulldozed and/or hornswaggled into it, probably by Uncle Teddy again. And those votes won't be going to Republicans.

Hey, it's not like importing constituents is anything new for the Dems.

In the mean time, the ultimate fate of this bill is anybody's guess. Kate O'Beirne and Robert Novak quote "Senate insiders" as declaring its passage a fait accompli by a filibuster-proof margin. Whereas the Washington Times is reporting that Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is clearing the decks for a filibuster that he just might be able to sustain:

The immigration deal foundered yesterday, on the verge of collapse under its own weight just days after it appeared to have a clear path to pass the Senate.

By late in the afternoon, Republicans were accusing Democrats of trying to "stuff" them, and Democrats said Republicans were trying to kill the bill by obstructing the process. Both sides were saying they don't know whether the process can be put back on track.

A showdown is scheduled for tomorrow, when Democrats said they will force a vote to set a time limit on the bill, and Republicans have promised to block that move through a filibuster. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said that if Republicans block his effort to limit debate, it would bump the bill off the schedule and likely derail it for the rest of the year.

We should be so lucky. That outcome would be like dodging an asteroid strike.

The bullet, however, may still strike home, as John Cornyn's amendment preventing alien felons from being legalized was voted on and defeated on a pretty much party-line vote. That was said to be the biggest poison pill in the non-RINO GOP arsenal.

Yeah, it's an embarrassment for the Dems, if they were capable of such an emotion. But any repurcussions about that are a year and a half away, and in the meantime a Rose Garden signing ceremony with Dubya surrounded by beaming Donks and RINOs would raise the estrangement between GOP poobahs and grassroots to radioactive proportions.

Mark this well: The debacle of November 2006 can, at least on the Senate side, be traced to the McCain mutiny of early summer 2005. If this immigration amnesty/terrorist welcome mat isn't throttled right now, you ain't seen anything yet.