IMMIGRATION REFORM -- (Senate - June 07, 2007) [Page: S7313] --- Mr. REID. Mr. President, this has been a very difficult time. I think there has been a lot of bending over backward to accommodate people who have wanted to offer amendments. Initially, as you will recall, the negotiators were given quite a bit of time, and then when that ``quite a bit of time left,'' they wanted another week and they got that. After the debate started, the majority leader said, this is a 2-week bill, and it is. I extended debate past the recess. During the floor debate, we have disposed of 42 amendments, including 28 rollcall votes. Last night we asked for consent to move the cloture vote from this morning to tonight so we could have another full day of amendments. That didn't work out. I understand why some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle thought maybe that wasn't a good idea. But I thought we could, after cloture was not invoked this morning, move some other amendments. We tried hard to do that. We were unable to do that. I tried every possible way to get amendments up today; every possible way. A real short recounting of this. I offered votes on eight amendments, four on each side. Then we tried six, three on each side. Again, my friends on the other side of aisle objected to that. Then I tried three Republican amendments, only two Democratic amendments. That was objected to by my colleagues on the other side. Finally, I tried to get a significant number of additional amendments pending so they could receive votes after cloture. That was objected to. Republicans even objected to calling up their own amendments. So having spent all day trying to diligently work out a way to vote on Republican and Democratic amendments and facing objections from my Republican colleagues, I found the only thing we can do is try to get cloture tonight. I was hoping my friends on the other side of the aisle would understand that small groups shouldn't dictate what [Page: S7314] happens around here, but that is what happened. But I, even though disappointed, look forward to passing this bill. We are going to take the bill off the Senate floor, as I just indicated and we have done. But there are ways we can do this. There could be an agreement of a number of amendments. I am saying to everyone here, I would do my very best to have more Republican amendments than Democratic amendments. I know some of my colleagues don't want me to say that, but I would be willing to do that, with a time certain for passing this bill. Hopefully, we can do that in the next several weeks. There is a lot of support for this bill on the outside. The problem was on the inside of the Senate Chamber. People have worked very hard on this bill. One of my colleagues in my office today, who has worked on this bill so hard, shed some tears. This is a bill about which people have a lot of emotion. I have to acknowledge that my first reaction was, look how many votes they gave us, six or seven. All the Democrats could have voted for cloture--and we did, all but 10--and we still couldn't have gotten cloture. That was my reaction, to be upset. But there is no reason to be upset. I think we have to look toward passing this bill. It is something that needs to be done. There are some really good things in this bill. The DREAM Act--I will not belabor the point, but I will just briefly say that in Smith Valley, NV, a little mining community, a number of years ago, this beautiful child came up to me, a senior in high school. I knew she wanted to talk to me, and she did. She said: I am the smartest kid in my class. I can't go to college. My parents are illegal. What am I going to do, Senator? She couldn't do anything. I don't know what she is doing now. She is a grown woman, probably working on the onion farms in Smith Valley. Maybe she got married. I don't know what happened to her. She should have been able to go to college. We had a provision in this bill to allow people like that young lady to go to college. A young man in Reno, NV, a small-in-stature Hispanic--he would be the master of ceremonies at events. He could sing. He could talk. It took me a number of years to realize he was in the country but he had bad papers. He couldn't drive a car. I haven't seen him for a number of years, don't know what has happened to him. He couldn't go to college. Under this legislation which is now no longer on the Senate floor, he could have had a pathway to legalization. He already knew English. He spoke better English than I do. Get a job, pay taxes, stay out of trouble--I am confident he would do that--pay some penalties and some fines to go to the back of the line, to be able to come out of the shadows, get the ability to drive a car. But we are not going to be able to do that for him now. I have every desire to complete this legislation. We all have to work--the President included--to figure out a way to get this bill passed. I am a creature of the Senate. I understand we live by the rules that govern this body. A small number of people can disturb what goes on here. My disappointment--and I have expressed this to Senator McConnell--is I wish more of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle had in effect thumbed their nose at a few of these people and voted for cloture, at least giving us more votes than what we got. It didn't happen. There are personal reasons for doing that. I accept that. But in my office, about 7 o'clock tonight, a number of we Democratic Senators met there and made a commitment to each other that we are going to do everything we can to pass this bill as soon as we can. When is that? I don't know. But we are going to work hard. We are going to try to put aside the hurt feelings we have and move on with the anticipation that this bill is something the country needs, and the Senate needs to do this. I hope we can figure out a way to do so. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. PRYOR). The Republican leader. Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, my good friend the majority leader and I frequently are on opposite sides of issues and fighting to a draw occasionally. But on the matter we are dealing with tonight, both of us desire the same result, which is to get a bipartisan immigration bill that would be an improvement over the disastrous status quo we have on this important issue in America today. The utility, however, of a great many cloture votes, particularly when you don't succeed, is that it doesn't produce results. I had indicated to my good friend the majority leader at the beginning of this debate that we needed--``we'' meaning this side of the aisle--to have roughly the same number of Republican rollcall votes on this bill this year that we had the last time we brought it up. Now I think we were very close to getting there. My advice to my good friend on the other side was to not have this vote we just had tonight. I didn't believe I could support cloture at this point, although I certainly could at some point, provided we had enough votes on the amendments for which there was a demand on our side of the aisle. But we were not there yet. We could have finished this bill in a couple of more days, in my judgment. Frankly, we have had too many cloture votes this year to get successful results. This is the 37th cloture vote we have had this year. By this point in the 109th Congress, we had had 13. By this point in the 108th Congress, we had had nine. By this point in the 107th Congress, we had had two. So my suggestion on a bill like this which does enjoy bipartisan support is to meet the threshold of acceptability, to get enough support over here to get to final passage. I think we are giving up on this bill too soon. I like what I think I heard the majority leader say, that he doesn't want to give up on it either. I think we are within a few days of getting to the end of what many would applaud as an important bipartisan accomplishment of this Congress. I encourage the majority leader to return to this issue in the near future. I doubt if the prospects will get better with the passage of time. There are a number of Republicans who are prepared to vote for cloture as soon as they believe their colleagues on this side of the aisle have had a reasonable opportunity to have offered and voted upon amendments they think would improve the bill. I don't think that is asking for too much. I would be happy to commit tonight to the majority leader to continue to work with him to try to finish this bill at the earliest possible time. Obviously, it is his decision to decide when we go back to it. My advice would be to do that sometime soon. In the meantime, we will still be working with people on this side of the aisle to try to winnow down the number of amendments that really seem to need a rollcall vote and be prepared to try to work on this again at whatever point the majority leader decides to return to the measure. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader. Mr. REID. Mr. President, the distinguished Republican leader has laid out the problem: We are very close. At some point, we will be ready to vote for cloture. We need more votes on amendments, even though we have had more than on the bill last year. We are getting close to being prepared to vote for cloture. We have spent so much time on this bill trying to make people happy whom you couldn't make happy on this bill anyway. They had no intention of voting for the bill, voting for cloture. But we spent an inordinate amount of time---- Mr. McCONNELL. Will the leader yield on that point? Mr. REID. Mr. President, in a brief minute. I want the right tone set here. I don't want this to be an adversarial process. This is not a battle between REID and MCCONNELL. The votes show what happened. It doesn't take Einstein to figure that one out. Republicans didn't vote for cloture. They hadn't had enough. What is enough? I don't know what is enough. One of the elements that hasn't been mentioned here tonight--but only in passing, because I want to set the right tone--this is the President's bill. Last year, we passed the Democratic immigration bill. We passed it with help from some courageous Republicans. Here, part of those courageous Republicans met with some very strong Democratic Senators, working with Cabinet officers, to come up with a bill. They came up with a bill. The press has declared this to be the grand compromise. I accept that term. Where are [Page: S7315] the President's men? Where are the President's people helping us with these votes? We are finished with this for the time being. As we have been for days, we are going to have a list for you right away. We should have it by 5 o'clock tonight. We will have it for you in the morning. We are very close. At some point, we are going to do this. Pretty soon, we will have enough votes so we can support cloture. We are prepared to vote for cloture but not right now. I want to finish this bill, but I can't do it alone. We can't do it alone. We did more than our share here tonight on cloture votes. We picked up seven votes during the day from the vote this morning to the vote this evening. But we need some help. I would hope the President understands that it is only going to be about 16 months until there is an election for a new President, either a Democratic or Republican President. He has a relatively short period of time to help us with this piece of legislation. People know I am very concerned about what comes up on the floor. I am very time-conscious with what needs to be done. I am not always right, and I acknowledge that. But no one can take away from the fact that I try to get as much as we can out of this Senate. I am going to continue to do that. Part of the time I want to make sure we are able to add into the picture is time to do an immigration bill, but we over here can't do it alone. We need some help. We have an opportunity, as I said before. We want this number of amendments, and we are not going to go for 34. I heard that one yesterday. But whatever it is--10, 6, 5, 4, 3, a time for final passage--we will find time to get this bill up. If they--meaning the other side--have another idea how to get it done, we will work with them. We want to pass this bill. We are committed to immigration reform. We believe our country needs it, not only for the people who live in this country but people outside the country who recognize we have the ability to solve our own problems. Immigration is a problem. We are committed to work on it. And we will continue to do that. I hope for the good of this country we can move forward in a positive manner and pass this legislation. I say again, let's have President Bush work with us. I want to work with him. You do not hear that from me very often. I will do whatever I can to have this part of his legacy, his immigration bill. I want no credit for it. No one else wants any credit for it. It can be his bill because if we pass this, there is credit to go around for everybody. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican leader. Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, this is a complicated bill, but the key to passage is not complicated. Let me say again what I have been saying for 2 weeks. There is a demand on this side of the aisle to have roughly the same number of Republican rollcall votes that we had when we took up this bill in the last Congress. Now, my good friend, the majority leader, keeps referring to Members on our side of the aisle who are not going to vote for the bill under any circumstances, and there are a number of those on our side of the aisle. But they are not the key to getting cloture. It is the rest of us. Let me be perfectly clear about it. What I am saying is, the rest of us who would like to be able to vote for cloture and would like to see us pass a bill are going to insist that the others of our colleagues--whether they vote for or against the bill in the end--have a chance to have roughly the same number of rollcall votes we had before. It is not complicated. It is a very complicated bill, but the key to getting it passed is not complicated. We are not that far away from being able to get cloture on a bill. And the people like myself, who, if this procedural hurdle of getting an adequate number of rollcall votes is met, are going to vote for cloture would probably be able to bring enough of our colleagues along to get cloture on the bill. That is why I advise my good friend to give it a couple more days. That is why I also advise him--right now, again, tonight--if he is going to turn back to this bill, I would not wait a whole long time to do it. It strikes me that it ought to be done sometime in the near future. If we can get this reasonable number of additional rollcall votes, I think there is an overwhelming likelihood of cloture on the measure and a bipartisan accomplishment. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader. Mr. REID. Mr. President, keep in mind the logic of this. It has been made graphically clear to me that the Republicans wanted more votes on their amendments. One problem: They objected to bringing up their own amendments. It makes it a little tough to vote on them. It is like having a basketball tournament where you have the five players on each side, and they are going to have a tournament, and the winner is the team with the most points, but--one problem--nobody will supply a basketball. That is what we had here. The logic of the statement of my friend from Kentucky leaves me without a lot of understanding. They want more amendments. We did everything we could to have amendments today. I will go through it again. We started out with eight. They objected to it. Six, five; they objected every time. We said: Do you want more amendments pending? Here they are. We will give you six or eight. Objection. So we know where we are. But let's realize where we are and not make up the facts. The real true facts: We wanted to give the Republicans votes on amendments. Voice votes did not count. It had to be rollcall votes. And I accepted that. But we could not get any kind of votes because we could not get amendments up--not for our fault. So, Mr. President, I do not want to leave this floor tonight without stating how much I admire and appreciate seven courageous Republicans who did the right thing. They know what went on here in the last few days is wrong. They voted for cloture tonight. I am confident that others will join them in the future, if we have to do cloture again. But everyone--everyone--should acknowledge that what these seven Senators did was not easy. It is an act of courage that they did this. While my compliments for them may not be very much, when the history books are written, this will be a profile in courage for their doing this tonight. I am convinced that is true. I admire them and appreciate what they did, setting an example. I think we have all said enough, but I want to get the last word. So if people want to say more, I will-- The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican leader. Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, then I want to express my admiration for the 12 Democrats who voted against cloture for being profiles in courage. Look, the point is, it is quite simple. We all know how to get cloture. It is to have enough Republican rollcall votes, as I have repeatedly told my good friend from Nevada over the last 2 weeks. At whatever point we want to turn back to the bill and meet that threshold requirement, I think there is an overwhelming likelihood of getting cloture and moving forward. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader. Mr. REID. Mr. President, last word--I hope. You cannot have votes on amendments that people do not let you bring up to vote on. There is no basketball, remember. We have a game going but no basketball. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, this vote was obviously a disappointment. I think those of us who have worked on this issue are encouraged by what both leaders have stated, that we are not giving up or forgetting this legislation, and we have every intention of ultimately finalizing and getting a bill. Tonight we cannot look away from what is happening on the southern borders that are open to the kind of vandalism that has taken place, the exploitation which has taken place. We cannot look out at our broken immigration system and think we can let that continue. We cannot look away from so many locations across this country where people who are undocumented are being exploited--dangerously exploited--dehumanized. We cannot look away from those who have worked in the agribusinesses of this country and had real hope we were going to take action in the Senate, where we have worked for years and years and years in order to get legislation through, which 67 Members of this Senate have cosponsored. Their dreams are dashed this evening. [Page: S7316]