DHS Funding... problem. Follow

That's not what happened here though. This wasn't an immigration bill where they then added abortion restrictions, putting moose on the endangered species list or provided funding for a new dam. Gbaji is just saying that the House leadership was mad about immigration related aspects of the bill: work permits, chance for legal reconciliation, stuff like that. Now, what they should have done was pass their own similar legislation and then hash out those details in the reconciliation committee. But the truth is that the House GOP never has any intention of allowing a comprehensive immigration bill to pass so there's no "poison pills" you could add to scuttle a deal unless you count everything beyond "razor wire fences and alligator moats" to be a poison pill.

I'd have to re-research the bill process, but I believe it came out of Judiciary.



There is no such thing as these "gang of X" in legal terms. They don't write legislation. They are a PR front for legislation, usually created specifically to make a bill appear bipartisan. Nothing more. Legislation is written in committee, amended in committee, and voted on in committee, and then, if the majority leader chooses to put said bill on the agenda, it is then subjected to yet more discussion and potential amendments before finally being voted on by the full body.



Yeah. That's not what I was talking about. The bill was written with provisions that would allow it to pass the Senate, but not the House. Deliberately. What part of that don't you get? The process was intentionally manipulated so as to create the very "House GOP opposes immigration reform" argument you are making.



Bi-partisan in the Senate. And arguably only because several high profile GOP senators had already attached their names and reputations to the process and didn't want to be seen as voting against their own bill. The point you seem to miss is that the press release with the Gang of 8 announcing their plan to create immigration reform that both parties could agree to occurred *before* the white house got itself involved. It was after that point when the substance of the bill changed from the earlier proposals to the final version that passed committee.



If it had actually been very popular and a product of both parties (in both houses) it would have passed the House. What part of that is confusing to you?



Less so than you trying to insist that something that failed on party lines in the House was actually bipartisan all along. So, the House voted against a bill they liked because....? Yeah, that makes so much more sense than "some GOP senators swallowed hard and voted for a bill they didn't like because they'd already stuck their necks out in support of an earlier version of it, knowing the House would reject it anyway and knowing that their only other alternative would be a filibuster". It was far easier for them to just pass it in the Senate and let the House reject it, right? Remember the GOP was in the minority in the Senate but the majority in the House at the time, so doing exactly what they did makes by far the most sense.

Why spend time and effort filibustering a bill in the Senate when you know it'll fail in the House? It's politics. Arguing that this ever made the bill itself bipartisan is really ridiculous and reflects an incredibly poor understanding of the political process.

I suppose we could continue to argue about this, but at the end of the day, no matter how much you may rail about the evils of "the obstructionist GOP", the fact is that all the while the GOP has done all these things, which you seem quite sure make them look terrible and will cost them politically, they've been gaining more and more seats. 9 Senate seats and 13 House seats gained in 2014 Joph. So clearly, the GOP is winning the public perception game.

Obviously, we can't attribute weight to any one single event, but on net, it certainly appears that the voting public agrees with the GOPs positions and actions more than the Dems. So forgive me if I don't buy this whole narrative about how bad the GOP is making themselves look by taking unpopular positions that will drive people away. Seems like maybe you need to poke your head out of the liberal echo chamber for a bit and see what the rest of the country really cares about and what they agree/disagree with. Cause they seem to be agreeing with the GOP most of the time.

Um... Ok. They knew it would not pass the House. That's why Boehner didn't put it up to a vote.



Why? It "failed in the house". The point isn't about the way it failed in the house, but about whether the Senate GOP should have filibustered the bill, knowing it would fail in the House anyway. Let's recall that your entire argument rests on the fact that 15 GOP Senators voted for the bill, thus making it "bipartisan". My counter is that they passed it for a couple of reasons, having zero to do with the bipartisan nature of the bill. I've been *very* clear as to what these reasons are.

You're tap dancing.

That's just more semantic tap dancing though. Obama spoke to members of his party in the Senate and had them add changes to the bill to ensure that it would not be satisfactory to both parties. He didn't block it personally, but took actions to ensure that it would not pass. Call that what you will, but it is fair to place the blame at his feet.

If you insist that the only place your group of friends can go out to dinner is a steak restaurant that has no vegetarian dishes despite knowing that half of the group is vegetarian, it's pretty ridiculous to blame the vegetarians for "blocking our dinner plans".




What do you mean? I'm completely comfortable with it. I've read the Senate bill. I've read the House GOP opposition to that bill. I agree with their reasons for opposing it. My position isn't based on discomfort, or some need to justify my position by arguing that it is bipartisan and thus the other side should have agreed. I do, however, find it amusing how often you seem to need to argue that something I and other conservatives oppose is really something we should agree on, via some contorted misinterpretation by you of conservative positions, and thus that when I and other conservatives oppose that thing, we're really just doing it because we want to be obstructionists, or closet racists, or whatever.


Um... How about taking our word about what our actual positions are, and why? It just seems amazing that we'll say something like "A path to citizenship that effectively rewards illegal immigration is a deal breaker", and your response is "they opposed a bill with a path to citizenship that rewards those who come to the country illegally, but I found a few GOP members in the Senate who voted for it, so they must really just want to obstruct any form of immigration reform at all". Yeah. That makes so much sense. Oh wait! It doesn't.

Edited, Mar 16th 2015 5:02pm by gbaji

Honestly, when you start chanting "semantics!" over and over, you've already lost.

Are you kidding? When Reid did it, he killed the bill. See, I can say it. Reid killed a bill he didn't want to see a vote because he wasn't confident about it failing. I don't have to blame the GOP or whoever else or pretend that the bill didn't really pass the House or some other nonsense to avoid saying it: Reid killed the bill. That's part of being the Majority Leader in your chamber.

Boehner killed immigration reform because he knew it would pass the House if it came up for a vote. Full stop. It's okay to just admit it. You know, rather than chanting "semantics" and pretending that you have some special insider knowledge of politics ( ) to avoid saying it. Boehner killed immigration reform.

Edited, Mar 16th 2015 8:02pm by Jophiel

All right. I'll let you have the last word with that.

gbaji has a Masters in Analogy from Almalieque U.

True story.

It's a super ridiculously common pattern. And yes, it is based purely on semantics.

Sometimes. "Taking money away from poor people harms them" isn't "semantics" it's just "reality".

What do we mean by that word? What do we mean?

Words, man, amitrite?