Riding to the Rescue (A Certain Immigration Update)

A daily dose of immigration-related links collected by Fred Bauer
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The big news of Thursday seems to be the Corker-Hoeven amendment.  This amendment was announced late Wednesday night and dominated much of the headlines on Thursday.  (Mickey Kaus provides an evolving analysis of this amendment here.)

A big challenge in talking about Corker-Hoeven is that the legislative text is still being drafted.  We have no clue what enforcement provisions will be watered down and what loopholes will be inserted.  For example, on Wednesday night, amendment sponsors were saying that the amendment had a "hard trigger" to ensure some level of enforcement effectiveness before newly legalized immigrants could proceed on the "path to citizenship."  By Thursday afternoon, that trigger was gone.  One thing that won't change for the amendment: legalization will always come before any enforcement targets.

Some might wonder whether the findings of the CBO report that S. 744 will not cause a huge reduction in illegal immigration started a panic among the Gang.  That report yanked away what cover Republicans and Democrats who ran on enforcement had to support the bill.  This new amendment could be used by S. 744 supporters to argue that the CBO calculation was outdated.  (However, CBO suggested that S. 744's colossal new guest-worker programs could be a source for future illegal immigration, as workers overstayed their visas.  Does even a quintupling of border patrol agents combat that risk?  Will Corker-Hoeven?) The Gang rushed to get this amendment in the public debate even before its legislative language was finalized.  Was that rush partially caused by panic?  (PS: Consider what Sen. Corker had to say about "amnesty" back in 2007...)

John Hinderaker posts an interesting claim he got from a trusted source a copule weeks ago:

It’s a trap. They are going to Toomey-Manchin this thing: Announce a big compromise right before the vote, give no one any time to read it, and scare GOP moderates into voting for it.

Is that happening now?  Hinderaker thinks it is.  Is this another case of having to pass the bill so that we can find out what's in it?
REACTIONS: Senator Schumer sounds very happy about the amendment, and some Republicans seem convinced by press reports about it, but others aren't so swayed...FAIR: "The Corker-Hoeven amendment simply puts some very expensive lipstick on a pig. S.744 will deliver amnesty to the people who broke our laws, it will deliver huge increases in foreign labor for business interests, but it will do nothing to protect the interests and security of the American people."....Senator Cornyn is shocked and amazed....Ace remains very unimpressed...Peter Kirsanow: "Regardless of where you stand on immigration reform, the endless and multiplying efforts of our elected representatives to hoodwink the American people should infuriate you".....Mark Krikorian: "The Corker-Hoeven amendment is a sham, pure simple. Anyone who votes for it is announcing that he thinks the American people are gullible fools."

GETTING TOWARD CLOTURE: Ted Cruz has started to fight strongly against S. 744, sponsoring a petition against it....Orrin Hatch still hopes to support S. 744...An interesting whip list for votes on S. 744 is here...


THE WORKING CLASS: Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is assumed by some to be a guaranteed "yes" for S. 744.  Yet Sanders has a long-standing opposition to guest-worker programs.  As he said the other day, "I do not support a huge expansion in the guest worker program that will allow hundreds of thousands of entry-level guest workers to come into this country."  Well, that's exactly what S. 744 does, and so far no amendments have been passed stripping the guest-worker provisions from the bill.  I've been told by a source that Sanders is still waiting to see how the final bill looks before deciding whether to support it or not.  Will Senator Sanders stand up for his principles in the days ahead and really fight to get rid of the guest-worker program?  Will he support a bill that has such a plan in it?  (PS: Sessions argued on Thursday that S. 744 will "accelerate the decline" of the working class.)

ON THE FLOOR: One vote on Thursday: Cornyn's RESULTS amendment was tabled 54-43.  Pryor and Manchin were only Democrats in favor of this amendment.  Rubio split from the Gang of Eight to support it; perhaps he got a pass from Schumer on this amendment, Andrew Stiles suggests.

FOR FRIDAY: Look for the text of Corker-Hoeven.  Some more thoughts from  Sessions's office on Reid's possible strategy in the days ahead:

“Reid could systematically table all the remaining amendments that are pending, holding votes to table one at a time,” background provided by Sen. Sessions’ staff reads. “Then he could call up Corker-Hoeven. After debating the amendment, he could file cloture on it to end debate.  He could also block debate and immediately file cloture. Then, a vote would be taken on the amendment. After Corker-Hoeven passed, Reid could ‘fill the tree,’ which is a power he has to block consideration of any amendments (and one he’s used far more than his predecessor, Bill Frist). Reid could then file cloture on S. 744 as amended by Corker-Hoeven. Then, a vote on final passage would occur.  So the bill, in its current form with the exception of the addition of Corker-Hoeven, could be passed (if it had the votes) without any further opportunity given to senators to alter/improve it—by early next week, even."

Time will tell!


(Link to this issue here.)  

What Bob Corker Had to Say about Amnesty in 2007

According to the Congressional Record, Senator Corker said on May 23, 2007,

 What I mean by that is this. There is a sense of fairness that we see many times on the floor that is not addressed by the fact that we have about 12 million people in this country today illegally. People see this bill as straight amnesty, where all of a sudden we are going to make it legal that if you have been here working, for however long, you become legal in this country by virtue of being here...
   It is that point, I think, that has divided the American people, the fact that this bill does not address the inequity of allowing those people to remain here. These are people who came here, obviously, to support their families, and we understand what the motivation is for many people to be here, but this bill does not address that inequity.    What I propose tonight and I am working with other Senators to hopefully make happen after we come back from recess, is to actually have a provision in this bill that treats people who are here illegally like those who wish to have a green card, like those who would be temporary workers in this bill. I would ask that other Senators work with me and others to create an amendment to this bill that actually would cause, over a reasonable amount of time, people who are working in this country to return to their home country and then come back through legal channels. I think that strikes at the very core of what so many Americans believe is so inappropriate about having illegal immigrants, illegal workers, automatically made legal.
   I think that is a central fallacy in this bill as it has been offered today. After many of these technical amendments are agreed to over the course of the next few days, and as we come back from recess, I look forward to working with other Senators to try to ensure that if this immigration bill passes, it passes in a way that meets the sense of fairness the American public believes this bill ought to have; that it addresses that inequity of people who jumped in front of the line and came here, being here illegally and yet being able to benefit without, during a reasonable period of time, returning home and coming back through legal channels, once we have the mechanisms in place to allow people to do that. I hope to have the opportunity to work with others in this body to make that happen. 

Senator Corker argued in 2007 that the "central fallacy" of the "comprehensive" bill of 2007 is that it allowed for "straight amnesty, where all of a sudden we are going to make it legal that if you have been here working, for however long, you become legal in this country by virtue of being here."  Doesn't S. 744 do that?  Doesn't Corker-Hoeven preserve the legalization-first approach of the Gang of Eight bill?

(In 2007, Sen. Corker seemed particularly to criticize the fact that the 2007 Senate bill did not require illegal immigrants to return to their native countries "and then come back through legal channels."  S. 744 doesn't require that, either.)

Daniel Horowitz also recalls what Corker had to say about "amnesty" in 2006.

The Pundits Turn (A Certain Immigration Update)

A daily dose of immigration-related links collected by Fred Bauer
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The CBO's finding that S. 744 will not radically curtail illegal immigration has shifted the momentum of this debate a little bit.  Critics of the bill are privately saying that this report may have changed the dynamic.

Why might that be the case?  Over at The Daily Caller, I explore how the CBO's report suggests that the bill fails by the standards set for it by the Gang of 8:

At the outset of the Senate debate, the Gang of Eight members laid down their policy marker: this bill would radically reduce, if not outright end, illegal immigration. The CBO has now suggested that this bill would do nothing of the kind. The CBO argues that the legislation would allow millions more illegal immigrants to enter the shadows, paving the way for yet another attempt to fix a “broken immigration system” a decade from now.
CBO projections are far from perfect prognostications, but this report does pose a challenge to the Gang of Eight. If the findings are wrong, why are they wrong? If they are wrong, by how much would S. 744 actually reduce future illegal immigration? If they are right or the Gang of Eight cannot dispute the findings successfully, will those senators who pledged to back the legislation on the grounds that it would end illegal immigration step away from it?
Promises on immigration enforcement have been broken before. The experience of the 1986 amnesty convinced many Americans about the dangers of putting amnesty ahead of enforcement. This CBO report suggests that the Gang of Eight bill, like the 1986 amnesty, might not live up to its proponents’ promises.

This finding might make it harder for those Democrats and Republicans who ran on enforcement of immigration laws to back this bill.

Over at NRO, Yuval Levin raises some significant questions about the bill:

That projection isn’t an argument. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t proceed. Immigration is good for America, but we govern and shape it with laws for a reason: Like all things, it is good up to a point, and it is better in some forms than in others. Have we thought through the volume of immigration that would result from this legislation? Have we thought through its balance of skills? Should we not hear a case for doubling American immigration over the next decade before we go ahead and do it? Has anyone argued for that? To what problem would such a huge increase be a solution? Does anyone have the sense that this is what our immigration debate has been about, or even quite understand that this is what the bill would do?
When the Hart-Celler immigration reform was enacted in 1965, creating today’s immigration system, everyone focused on the shifting of visa categories to finally put an end to racist quotas, and few people predicted that the law would dramatically distort the legal immigration system in the direction of massive chain immigration. It seems to me something similar is going on here—because we are focused on the question of offering legal status to illegal immigrants, we may be missing what this bill will really amount to in practice and what will matter most about it.
In any case, I think yesterday’s CBO reports are very important. The projections they make about economic effects (although they acknowledge they are premised on evidence drawn from much smaller waves of immigration than the one they project) and fiscal effects should help proponents of the law. But the projections they make about illegal immigration should put an end to any notion that this law will address that problem, and the projections they make about overall immigration levels should lead us to think about how much and what sort of immigration would be best for the country.

Ramesh Ponnuru adds: "it looks as though the CBO has actually driven a stake through the heart of the Gang of Eight’s case"


Some GOP aides believe that the window is closing on S. 744:

“The fact is, Senator Rubio is bouncing around trying to find a path out,” a Republican staffer told the Washington Examiner. “The bill is indefensible — and he has all but admitted it by saying ‘it must be improved.’  So he saddled up with Cornyn to try to get cover — but now that doesn’t seem to be working either. Now there are more secret back room-deals being attempted — while Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer stiff-arm Senator Grassley and other Republicans who are trying to modify the bill on the floor.  The American people are just waking up to the reality of another 1000 page amnesty bill — and there is a long way to go in this debate.”
Rubio stayed optimistic about gathering Republican support. “I think you’ll see something, God willing, early next week so people can start to look at it. A bunch of senators have been working on it,” he told Morrissey. “A lot of Republicans want to be supportive of something, but need to be able to go back home and tell people that they have taken serious steps to make sure this never happens again.”
The idea of having to back a substantial change to the bill on such short notice.”How long have they been working on this bill?” another Republican Senate  aide said. “And they are going to surprise everyone with a brand new bill just DAYS before senators vote on it, before anyone can read it, score it, evaluate it?”

HANNITY SWITCHES: Sean Hannity has been a fairly consistent ally of Rubio's plan.  That's changed:

Talk-show host Sean Hannity, who made waves after the election by saying he was open to legalizing illegal immigrants, changed course Wednesday, saying that Sen. Marco Rubio and fellow Republicans who negotiated the Senate legalization bill got duped by Democrats.
Mr. Hannity said that the way the debate is shaping up, Mr. Rubio and his fellow three Republicans who worked on the bipartisan Gang of Eight have delivered a winning political issue to Democrats.
“I do believe that he had the best of intentions when he started working on this issue. But I also told him during interviews early on that I do not trust Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin,” Mr. Hannity said of Mr. Rubio.
“Democrats have a history of not being trustworthy. My prediction seems to have become a reality. Democrats are basically using this as a political issue, not for the sake of solving an important problem but to boost future election chances by making this a wedge issue for 2014,” he said.
Mr. Hannity said Tuesday’s analysis from the Congressional Budget Office showed the bill won’t end illegal immigration in the way backers had promised, and would actually add to the costs of the new health-care law, though it would lower overall federal budget deficits.

Is this a sign of more switches to come?  See Hannity's interview with Rubio here: Rubio says he voted against enforcement amendments (Thune, etc.) because they didn't go far enough.  If the Gang has lost Hannity....

Perhaps Reid is getting a bit jumpy: he might move to file cloture on Thursday: 

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said that if a significant amendment agreement is reached Thursday, he could file cloture on the immigration reform bill that same day and avoid weekend work by continuing votes next week.“We are going to finish this bill before we leave here for the July 4th recess. I hope we don’t have to work here Friday, Saturday and Sunday,” Reid said Wednesday evening. “I’ve said before that I’d file cloture on the bill by Friday, Saturday, Sunday or even Monday. It looks like we might have to move that up a day and I might have to file cloture tomorrow.”

 What exactly the amendments are remains in limbo as of this writing.

This anxiety may partly be motivated by the fact that GOP support for this measure seems to be falling away.  Members of the Gang now seem to be conceding 70 votes as a very difficult goal.  McCain has suggested they might have in the low 60s.

Ted Cruz unleashes on S. 744:

He also denounced the idea that the bill successfully secured the border, but heightened the incentive to come to the United States illegally.
“We all know that the border security ain’t never gonna come, but the legalization happens immediately,” he said. “This Gang of Eight bill — if it passes — would increase illegal immigration.”
Cruz added that he believed that Sen. Harry Reid was nervous about the future of the bill.
“I think he’s starting to get nervous because the American people are waking up to the details of the bill,” he said.

Bernie Sanders is still complaining about guest-workers: "The Vermont independent's proposals include forbidding companies that have announced mass layoffs from hiring foreign guest workers; adding a fee to guest worker hires to fund a jobs program for low-income U.S. teens; and altering a cultural exchange visa program so that it no longer involves work for youths from overseas."  But will he propose any amendment to cut the size of the vast new guest-worker programs of S. 744?  If the senator is really concerned about guest workers, now is the time to act.

VOTES
Rand Paul's "trust but verify" amendment is defeated (61-37 to kill the amendment)...he seems to have turned against bill...
Mike Lee's enforcement amendment is also defeated 39-59.
Mary Landrieu is upset about some amendment votes.
SPEAKING OF AMENDMENTS: Corker and Hoeven continue to work on some border-security amendment...some possible details here....

 ELSEWHERE....Maybe the Gang of Eight bill will not "settle" the immigration issue for many left-leaning activists....Drucker points out some things to keep an eye on...Heritage: Congress is trying to fool you...NJ poll: voters want fewer guest-workers in high-tech and construction fields....

Laura Ingraham raises questions about the effect of this bill on the working class in a conversation with Paul Ryan:

“The CBO report says that [the Gang of Eight] approach, which would allow in all these people, would drive wages down. How can Paul Ryan, the man behind the growth agenda, say that driving American wages down is a good thing over the next twelve years, for the middle class who is struggling in Wisconsin and beyond?”

 See here for Ryan's response.

(Link to this issue here.) 

CBO Taketh Away (A Certain Immigration Update)

A daily dose of immigration-related links collected by Fred Bauer
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The key number from the much-blogged CBO report on S. 744 is not $197 billion or $700 billion but 25%: that's how effective the CBO predicts the Gang of Eight bill will be in blocking future illegal immigration:

However, other aspects of the bill would probably increase the number of unauthorized residents—in particular, people overstaying their visas issued under the new programs for temporary workers. CBO estimates that, under the bill, the net annual flow of unauthorized residents would decrease by about 25 percent relative to what would occur under current law...

So the guest-worker programs could, as some have suggested, increase the number of potential illegal immigrants.

And I thought Senator Schumer said that the Gang of Eight bill would end illegal immigration!  This finding complicates the efforts of the Gang of Eight to use this report as a political document.  If this CBO estimate is true, it utterly vitiates the central premise of the Gang of Eight: that this trade of legalization for enforcement is acceptable because it really will be the last one.  The "deal" of S.744 is that it solves the problem of illegal immigration.  CBO says it won't.  That seems kind of important.  (Meanwhile, Texas is experiencing a surge of illegal border crossings.)
Many sympathetic to S. 744 are trumpeting CBO's projection of savings over the short term, but this report has some other economic/budgetary findings, too.

CBO thinks that legalized individuals will gain access to some federal benefits prior to receiving citizenship: "If S. 744 was enacted, executive branch agencies would probably face pressure from states and other stakeholders to provide people who are lawfully present in the United States with the federal benefits that are available to qualified aliens, including assistance provided through Medicaid, CHIP, SNAP, student loans, and Pell grants."

The CBO's 10/20-year window allows it to miss the effects on Social Security/Medicare spending.  But there is a tantalizing hint: in 2014-2023, it estimates that SS/Medicare spending will go up $4 bill because of S. 744---by 2024-2033, it will have increased this spending by $70 billion.

What also has not gotten much press so far is another report the CBO put out on the economic effects of S. 744.  There, the news is slightly more pessimistic over the next ten years.  Some key tidbits: "Relative to what would occur under current law, S. 744 would lower per capita GNP by 0.7 percent in 2023" and "CBO’s central estimates also show that average wages for the entire labor force would be 0.1 percent lower in 2023."  CBO estimates that those at the bottom of the economic ladder would see the greatest wage pressure over the next ten years.  CBO estimates that, 20 years from now, S. 744 will make the average American wealthier, but that's a pretty long economic forecast.

There are reasons to be skeptical about the validity of CBO projections.  As Hot Air's AllahPundit wrote, "CBO scores may be near-worthless as predictive devices, but as political capital they’re very valuable. Remember how excited Democrats were when CBO initially scored ObamaCare as reducing the deficit by $140 billion between 2013 and 2019? A year later, CBO adjusted that downward to $95 billion. A year after that, they adjusted it downward again to … $4 billion."

The timeline on the Senate bill is getting crunched.  Reid may file for cloture within a few days.  Byron York thinks it's because Reid fears falling support for this measure.

Along those lines, I look at a poll showing a thin margin of support for the Gang's bill at the Corner:

Overall, enforcement beats the path to citizenship 62 percent to 36. Independents support enforcement over legalization 65–33; even Democrats only back legalization over enforcement by a single point (50–49), so it is very likely that a majority of Democrats in more conservative-leaning states (e.g., Indiana, Montana, and West Virginia) back enforcement over legalization. Interestingly, support for security over the pathway to citizenship is highest in the Midwest (65–34), a place the GOP will need to lock down to restore its presidential chances, and the Northeast (66–34), where Republicans have been decimated and need to rebuild.

WHICH RULE?

SHORT OF A PROMISE: Earlier on Tuesday, Jonathan Strong hinted that Speaker Boehner may not apply the Hastert rule to any vote on a House-Senate conference bill on immigration:

At a press conference following the GOP meeting, Boehner said he “suggested to our members today that any immigration-reform bill that is going to go into law ought to have a majority of both parties’ support if we’re serious about making that happen. So I don’t see any way of bringing an immigration bill to the floor that doesn’t have the majority support of Republicans.”
When I asked him if the commitment to garnering the support of a majority of Republicans extended to any conference report on immigration, Boehner said, “We’ll see when we get there.”

Later on Tuesday, a Boehner aide clarified this remark to Strong in order to suggest that something like the Hastert rule could apply to the conference report, too.  But Strong sounds a little doubtful: "Boehner said that the immigration bill 'ought to' enjoy the support of a majority of the GOP conference. It’s strong language but short of a promise."

Chuck Schumer's team still holds out hope that Boehner will violate the Hastert rule.  Brian Fallon, Schumer's communications director tweeted, "FLASHBACK: Boehner also boasted he wouldn't pass fiscal cliff w/o majority of GOP. Then he did anyway http://bit.ly/10qjGyO " and "Unlike w/other bills when Boehner violated Hastert rule, his leadership team- Cantor, McCarthy, Ryan-supports #CIR. Fewer knives out."  Is Fallon just saying that to soothe skittish GOP senators?  Or does he have real hope that Boehner could override the will of a majority of Republicans by teaming up with Democrats to pass a "comprehensive" legalization bill.

Many on the left seem to think that Boehner could very easily break Hastert in order to push a "comprehensive" bill: see Greg Sargent on why he thinks Boehner is bluffing here.  Harry Reid seems confident that Boehner will budge, too.

David Drucker of the Washington Examiner, who has pretty solid sources and is a keen Hill watcher, thinks that Boehner probably will apply Hastert to both any initial House immigration bill and a conference report on an immigration bill.  As he wrote in an email, "I can't imagine [Boehner] backs a strong GOP bill in House and lets it get gutted in Conference and then runs a bill that only gets supported by less than half of his Republicans."  

LOOKING FOR A MAJORITY:  Is Boehner hoping to get enough of his caucus to go along with the Gang of Eight?  Chris Frates wonders:

As a senior GOP leadership aide put it, “Our conference is all over the place. Our goal here is to try and find that little slice of land where we can walk through and we’re not crucified on either side.”
Republicans on and off the Hill say Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy all want to do something on immigration. Boehner “really wants to get that done but he has to be real quiet about it because if he puts his name on it and his brand on it, like he did with the big (fiscal-cliff) deal, then it’s probably going to die under its own weight,” a former GOP leadership aide said.
So House leaders have been meeting privately with members, making the case that inaction on immigration will be more costly than doing something. Weeks into the debate, it remains a hard sell among reform opponents, particularly members who do not want to offer citizenship to people here illegally. They worry that any House legislation—such as a tough border-security bill most of them are after—will ultimately be watered down in negotiations with the Senate.
“What will have to happen, and is happening in private discussions, is that we have to convince these guys if we’re going to go to conference, we’re not going to cave on our principles,” a senior House GOP aide said. “That is the sales job you have to make to those guys.”

(Also on Tuesday: a House immigration enforcement measure made it through a day of mark-up...)

SENATE VOTES
The Danged Fence: Thune's fence amendment (which would have required that some border fencing be put in place before legalization) failed 39-54.  The Gang stood unified against this measure.  (And Arizona's voters in 2010 thought Sen. McCain wanted to complete that danged fence!)  R's against (in addition to Gang): Ayotte and Murkowski.  D's for: Manchin and Pryor.  Interesting votes: Collins and Kirk voting for the fence.
Improved Visa Enforcement: Vitter's amendment to demand a visa-tracking system be in place before legalization failed 36-58.  Again, the Gang opposed.  Other non-Gang R's opposed: Ayotte, Collins, and Murkowski.  D's in favor: Pryor.
TAKEAWAY: The Gang won't let any amendment pass that makes legalization dependent upon enforcement.  The legalization must be unequivocal.  Could the continued failure of pro-enforcement amendments signal to some undecideds that the Gang will never agree to any amendment that really increases the enforcement profile of this bill?



ELSEWHERE ON THE WEB: Andrew Stiles wonders where Ted Cruz is....TNR's Isaac Chotiner warns Rubio and Republicans that the hope of taking immigration "off the table" is going to be disappointed....Philip Klein: CBO says S. 744 will expand Obamacare....Laura Ingraham: Why is Rep. Sam Johnson @SamsPressShop still part of the corrupt House Gang of 7? An insult to US workers. #CantFixMustDitch 202-225-4201...Mickey Kaus says it's time for opponents of S. 744 to unleash YouTube and gives out a list of Senators to think about:

Hammer-ready (Have indicated they’ll vote for Schumer-Rubio)
Ayotte (who was spectacularly ignorant of the bill’s provisions)
Begich (already getting testy!)
Graham
Landrieu (do it for North Dakota!)
Murkowski (voted against border fence)
Persuadable (Still wavering)
Alexander
Chambliss
Coburn
Collins
Corker
Hagan
Heller
Hoeven
Isakson
Pryor

(Link to this issue here.)

Is One Out of Four Good Enough?

The key number for the recent CBO report on S. 744 is not $197 billion or $700 billion but 25%: that's how effective the CBO predicts the Gang of Eight bill will be in blocking future illegal immigration:

However, other aspects of the bill would probably increase the number of unauthorized residents—in particular, people overstaying their visas issued under the new programs for temporary workers. CBO estimates that, under the bill, the net annual flow of unauthorized residents would decrease by about 25 percent relative to what would occur under current law...

So the guest-worker programs could, as some have suggested, increase the number of illegal immigrants.

And I thought Senator Schumer said that the Gang of Eight bill would end illegal immigration.

See also Stephen Dinan's write-up about the CBO report here.

(Look out for more on the CBO report in tomorrow morning's A Certain Immigration Update.)

Changing Rules

Jonathan Strong reveals that Speaker Boehner may not apply the Hastert rule to any vote on a House-Senate conference report on immigration:

At a press conference following the GOP meeting, Boehner said he “suggested to our members today that any immigration-reform bill that is going to go into law ought to have a majority of both parties’ support if we’re serious about making that happen. So I don’t see any way of bringing an immigration bill to the floor that doesn’t have the majority support of Republicans.”
When I asked him if the commitment to garnering the support of a majority of Republicans extended to any conference report on immigration, Boehner said, “We’ll see when we get there.”

This means, of course, that the House could vote for a pro-enforcement measure only to have it go to conference with something like S. 744.  Boehner seems to be suggesting here that he could override the will of a majority of Republicans by teaming up with Democrats to pass a "comprehensive" legalization bill if it came out of conference.

You Can't Cut It (A Certain Immigration Update)

A daily dose of immigration-related links collected by Fred Bauer
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The "bombshell" of Ryan Lizza's New Yorker article on immigration echoed through the political world on Monday.  Perhaps the most damaging quote from this article was the following by a Rubio aide:

‘There are American workers who, for lack of a better term, can’t cut it,’ a Rubio aide told me. ‘There shouldn’t be a presumption that every American worker is a star performer. There are people who just can’t get it, can’t do it, don’t want to do it. And so you can’t obviously discuss that publicly.’

Also damaging, as Hot Air notes, is Lizza's reporting about the White House's heavy hand in crafting the Gang of Eight bill.

It's clear that Rubio's office realizes the danger of these remarks; it immediately pushed back against them, alleging that Lizza took them out of context.  So Lizza posted a bigger excerpt of the exchange on Twitter:

RL: Well their argument is, what, that they have American workers for these jobs, they don’t need this program.
Rubio Aide 1: Yeah. I mean, one of the problems you have with this, “Oh there’s American workers who are unemployed.” There are American workers who, for lack of a better term, can’t cut it. There shouldn’t be a presumption that every American worker is a star performer. There are people who just can’t get it, can’t do it, don’t want to do it. And so you can’t obviously discuss that publicly because. . .
Rubio Aide 2: But the same is true for the high-skilled workers.
Rubio Aide 1: Yes, and the same is true across every sector, in government, in everything.

Does this context really improve the quote much?

These revelations pose a few problems for the immigration bill.  The statements by Rubio's aide comes precisely at a time when anxiety about the immigration bill's effects on the poor/unemployed is starting to rise.  If the GOP really is going to become the party of economic opportunity for the broad middle, "American workers...can't cut it" seems a troublesome slogan.

Also, Lizza's report seems to suggest that this immigration bill is President Obama's bill.  Lizza implies that the White House has veto power over many sections of the bill.  Rubio and some other senators supportive of the Gang of Eight have been criticizing the administration's handling of the IRS, Benghazi, and other issues---only to be working hand in hand with the administration to establish what one official calls "one of the top five legislative accomplishments in the last twenty years."  In terms of legislative accomplishment, it seems as though the president's team would view the Senate immigration bill as a perfect companion to Obamacare on the trophy shelf.

Also, this controversy moves the immigration debate from concerns about electioneering and process to the fate of the American worker.

FALLOUT: Mark Krikorian: "Survival of the Fittest: Vote GOP" not exactly a winning campaign slogan...Geoffrey Norman: a lot of people who can't cut it work on Capitol Hill....Conn Carroll: "Everyone in Washington knows personnel is policy. Rubio can no more distance himself from this aide’s statement than Obama can distance himself from the supposedly “rogue” IRS agents in Cincinnati."....Jonathan Chait: "The Rubio aide quote is not only a piece of shocking candor, but also the biggest single blunder the pro-reform coalition has committed so far. Party elites may nod along when they read it, but there’s a reason nobody in politics ever says anything like this."


BY THE WAY: Has big labor chosen to support the Gang of Eight bill rather than defend the dignity of workers?  Messages to the AFL-CIO press team about the "can’t cut it" remarks got crickets in response. 

ELSEWHERE ON THE HILL: David Drucker reports that Boehner is likely to apply the "Hastert rule" to immigration after all...

House Speaker John Boehner is not going to bring a comprehensive immigration-reform plan to the floor if a majority of Republicans don't support it, sources familiar with his plans said.
"No way in hell," is how several described the chances of the speaker acting on such a proposal without a majority of his majority behind him.
Boehner, R-Ohio, does not view immigration in the same vein as the fiscal cliff last December, when he backed a bill that protected most Americans from a tax increase even though less than half of the GOP lawmakers were with him, said multiple sources, who spoke anonymously to allow greater candor.
With economists warning that the deep cuts and higher taxes needed to avoid the fiscal cliff could devastate an already ailing economy, Boehner felt compelled to compromise with President Obama and allow taxes to rise on the wealthiest taxpayers. He feels no such urgency about immigration reform, lawmakers said.

In the aftermath of Lizza's article, the Speaker might be even more inclined to follow that rule. (Is the grumbling among some of the rank-and-file part of the reason for this switch?)

Big question: does this news make it easier for Senate GOP to support S. 744 or harder?  Easier: It lets senators believe that some firewall still exists in the House.  Harder: It says to uncertain senators, Do you want a hard vote for a bill that will never become law?

ON THE FLOOR: Setting up the pieces on the Senate floor on Monday.  Reid praised S. 744; Sessions criticized.  Look for a few votes on amendments on Tuesday afternoon (Thune's fence amendment likely to be one of them).  The votes seem to have 60-vote thresholds....Keep an eye out for a CBO score on S. 744 on Tuesday....Also, Sen. Cruz proposes a voter-ID amendment...Late-breaking update: Byron York on a new "enforcement" amendment to be considered....

LOWERING EXPECTATIONS: Gang of 8 member Dick Durbin is now backtracking from the goal of 70 votes...

IN THE COMMENTARIAT: Andrew Sullivan previews the tactics the left will use even if the GOP passes mass legalization...health-care is part of the story....Rush continues to emphasize more populist themes....At National Review: the editors continue to lament "Rubio's folly" and Victor Davis Hanson considers some of the stakes of the immigration debate: "Indeed, the tragedy of illegal immigration is that it becomes the cornerstone for hundreds of agendas: those of the self-interested Mexican government, exploitative American employers, the new ethnic chauvinists, the upper middle classes who deem themselves lords of the manor, and, yes, the elite whose professions are as noble as their deeds are not....In the meantime, for those who profit both materially and psychologically from something that largely benefits the elite and hurts the mass, at least spare us the hypocritical aspersions and bottled pieties."

(Personal note: Thanks to Conn Carroll, Mickey Kaus, and Mark Krikorian, among others, for mentioning this newsletter on its launch.)

(Link to this issue here.)

Resistance Rising? (A Certain Immigration Update)

A daily dose of immigration-related links collected by Fred Bauer
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A POPULIST UPRISING?

Last week's Faith and Freedom Coalition's "Road to Majority" Conference saw a clash between the establishment and insurgent voices on the right, the latter emphasizing themes of economic uplift for the average American.  This approach to economic issues could have significant implications for the immigration debate in the Senate and the House.  Rick Santorum argued that the Republican convention of 2012 mishandled President Obama's infamous "you didn't build that" comment:

“One after another, they talked about the business they had built. But not a single—not a single —factory worker went out there,” Santorum told a few hundred conservative activists at an “after-hours session” of the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference in Washington. “Not a single janitor, waitress or person who worked in that company! We didn’t care about them. You know what? They built that company too! And we should have had them on that stage.”

At that same conference, Michele Bachmann also highlighted economic concerns, and used these concerns to criticize the Gang of Eight's immigration bill.  As Bachmann said about the Senate bill in another venue last week, “It’s going to lower wages, lower benefits, bankrupt the United States and take away job opportunities for our kids."

As Katrina Trinko reported, Sarah Palin's attacks upon the Senate bill at this conference also emphasized the economic:

“I say this as someone who’s kind of fertile herself,” the mother of five told attendees at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Conference today. “I don’t think that’s where we want to go in deciding how will we incentivize the hard-working responsible families who want to . . . follow the law and become Americans versus those whose very first act on our soil is to break the law. “
During his speech at the same event on Friday, Bush had said that “immigrants are more fertile,” and noted that the United States was not replacing its population quickly enough.
Palin also derided the Gang of Eight’s proposal. “Let’s not kid ourselves in believing that we can rebuild our majority, by the way,” she urged, “by passing a pandering, rewarding-the-rule-breakers, still-no-border-security, special-interests-ridden amnesty bill.”

So Palin says it's amnesty (her full speech is available here).  It's Palin vs. Ryan---Republican VP candidate vs. Republican VP candidate---on whether or not this is "amnesty."


Jeff Sessions escalates his criticism of the immigration bill in a statement released on Sunday:

When the Gang of Eight first announced their immigration bill they declared it was the toughest enforcement plan in history. They declared enforcement would come before legalization. And they declared that anyone who suggested otherwise didn’t know what they were talking about.

Now the bill has been reviewed and there can be no dispute: it weakens current law, undermines future enforcement and puts amnesty—not enforcement—first. So new promises of amendment ‘fixes’ to save the bill should be viewed with great skepticism: every time, on every issue, the promises have not matched with reality. They promised back taxes—but the requirement isn’t there; they promised tight restrictions on welfare benefits—but state and local benefits, as well as tax credits, will be available immediately and federal welfare access is granted to millions of illegal immigrants starting in five years; they promised to protect workers—but this bill would devastate workers by tripling the number of legal immigrants over the next decade and doubling the number of guest workers.

No small cosmetic fix can save this bill, with so many provisions clearly authored by special interests whose chief desires are lower wages and amnesty—rather than a lawful, rational system of immigration.

Sessions also seems to be hitting that economic theme in indicting that desire for "lower wages."

Will these economic criticisms make any headway on the Senate floor?  Is Bernie Sanders listening?  Are Republican economic reformers?

(PS: Edward Lazear of Stanford/Hoover argues that the labor market remains "stuck in the mud."  Do dwindling employment prospects strengthen the case for guest-workers?)

(PPS: What are we supposed to make of a Rubio staffer's statement that "There are American workers who, for lack of a better term, can’t cut it...There are people who just can’t get it, can’t do it, don’t want to do it. And so you can’t obviously discuss that publicly."  What else can't Rubio's staff discuss publicly?  The quote comes from Ryan Lizza's new New Yorker story on the immigration bill, featured in Playbook.  Via Rich Lowry, Rubio's people are already pushing back against this quote---but not denying that it was said.)


ON THE SUNDAY SHOWS...Rubio: Immigration bill nearly "perfect"...Graham: GOP in a "demographic death spiral"....Gingrich: Yes, GOP is going to support "path to citizenship"...Will: "And it comes down to the killer Bs, benefits and borders. If you don't secure the borders, you're not going to pass either house."....

THE WEEK AHEAD

Ramsey Cox draws attention to six Senate amendments worth keeping an eye on:

• The RESULTS amendment
• Same-sex couples amendment
• Rubio’s English language amendment
• ‘Trust but Verify’
• Hatch amendments
• Building a Fence    

Senator Cornyn's RESULTS amendment seems a big one to watch.  It could give cover to numerous Republicans (such as Kirk) to vote in favor of the Gang's bill.  Heritage Action has slammed this amendment ("it should be called 'NO-RESULTS' because it fails to solve the enforcement problems in the underlying bill") and has announced it would record this vote on its legislative scorecard.  (Mickey Kaus isn't very optimistic about RESULTS, either.)

This week, keep an eye out for immigration bills from the House, too.  The Hill reports:

The Judiciary panel will attempt to send two proposals to the chamber floor. The first, which is designed to bolster the enforcement of immigration laws in the nation's interior, will be marked up Tuesday; the second, which relates to the guest-worker program catering to the nation's agriculture industry, will follow....
At the same time, the bipartisan group of House lawmakers negotiating a comprehensive reform package are struggling to finalize a deal. Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), one member of that group, predicted Tuesday that an agreement is imminent, but Rep. Raúl Labrador's (R-Idaho) decision to leave the group earlier in the month has only highlighted the difficulty of crafting a proposal that can pass through the divided House.

Any immigration bill that leaves the House could go to conference with any immigration bill passed by the Senate... 

WSJ notes some possible sway-able votes, including Johanns (R-NE), Heller (R-NV), Baucus (D-MT), and Sanders (I-VT).

DEFINITIONS, DEFINITIONS

Late last week, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) said that he would debate anyone who argued that the Senate immigration bill is amnesty.  The head of Heritage Action has replied to that challenge: "If the Gang of Eight’s bill becomes law, individuals who complied with the law – left the country when their visa expired, are still waiting in line, etc – will not be eligible for RPI status.  Only those in the country illegally will be eligible to apply for a status that allows them to, almost immediately, live and work in the country.  Not only will illegal immigrants have their slates wiped clean, they will receive a near-immediate benefit as a result of their illegal status."  More thoughts on the meaning of "amnesty" from Heritage Action here.

(Link to this issue here.)

Announcing an New Immigration Debate Newsletter

Just a brief announcement: In the lead-up to the Senate immigration vote, I'm pulling together a daily newsletter on the immigration bill.  It will aggregate some of the big happenings of the day before along with commentary, and it will also draw attention to what to look for in the day ahead.  I plan on running it daily up until the Senate immigration vote, and, depending on the vote, could keep it active after that.

If you're interested in subscribing, you can go here.

The newsletter goes live Monday morning.

Now and Then

According to the Hill, Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR) is edging toward voting on behalf of the Gang of Eight bill:

Media reports have characterized Pryor as a likely Democratic defector on immigration reform, but on Thursday he endorsed the bill.
“I’m inclined to support it,” he told The Hill. “I’m watching the amendment process very closely. I’m concerned that they may add some sort of poison pill amendment or something like that, but nonetheless I’m inclined to support it."

Yet, in 2008, when he was running for re-election, Senator Pryor had the following to say about immigration:

While I recognize our nation’s immigration system is broken, I do not support amnesty.
With more than twelve million illegal immigrants in our nation and more arriving every day, the burden on our schools, hospitals and law enforcement agencies is severe...There can be no solution to this problem without first securing our borders.

The Battle over Hearts (A Certain Immigration Update)

Michele Bachmann says that ignoring the interests of American workers is the opposite of compassion: "Bachmann told the audience at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference today that being ”people of compassion” on immigration means opposition to amnesty for illegal immigrants, because the policy would hurt American workers and legal immigrants."

National Journal: How Marco Rubio and Rand Paul could team up to pass Gang of Eight bill: "Rubio badly needs immigration reform to pass, having invested so much time and political stock in the bill's passage and lacking a major legislative achievement. Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah signaled this week that their votes are out of reach, leaving Paul as Rubio's best hope for a prominent tea party wingman."

Politico reports on how President Obama is trying to network with House Republicans in the hope of passing some immigration bill.

Some House Republicans demand that the "Hastert rule" be applied on immigration; the Speaker's office remains open to possibilities.

Mickey Kaus says that concerns about DUI convictions are driving Democratic opposition to the Cornyn amendment.

Mark Krikorian writes that some in the GOP establishment believe that enforcement will actually happen this time (though he thinks this belief is unrealistic).

The Hill reports that the Cornyn amendment could be used as a vehicle for Republicans to back the president's immigration plan:

A Republican senator who is wavering over whether to support the bill said Cornyn’s vote would bring along a large group of colleagues because Cornyn is the Republican whip and represents a border state.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) suggested earlier in the week that his vote and the support of other Republicans could be contingent on the fate of Cornyn’s proposals.

Conn Carroll remarks,

The Cornyn amendment requires both the DHS Secretary and the Customs and Border Patrol Commissioner to certify, “under the penalty of perjury,” that the triggers have been met before illegal immigrants can become citizens. It also requires the DHS Inspector General to certify completion of the triggers (although not under the penalty of perjury).
That’s it. That is the big difference between the two bills on how completion of the security measures are verified. S. 744 requires DHS Secretary certification, while Cornyn requires certification from the DHS Secretary, the CBP Commissioner, and the DHS IG.
So far no Democrats have objected to this framework. It is hard to see how Cornyn and pro-amnesty Republicans can’t split the difference on the substance of triggers while letting Cornyn keep his verification mechanism.

Harry Reid is pretty optimistic about working with Speaker Boehner on immigration.

Some Immigration Links for a Thursday

Mickey Kaus is skeptical about Senator Cornyn's RESULTS amendment, as is Conn Carroll.  Carroll also has some doubts about Democratic objections to RESULTS.

Senator Durbin says that the Gang of Eight de-links citizenship and border security.  Senator Graham disputes this.

The Grassley amendment to put enforcement before legalization is stopped in the Senate, 57-43.  Most Republicans voted in favor of this amendment; most Democrats voted against it.  The only exceptions: Gang of Eight Republicans voted against it (McCain, Rubio, Flake, and Graham) along Lisa Murkowski (AK), and Democrats Joe Manchin and Mark Pryor voted in favor of it.

Congressman Paul Ryan says he will "debate" anyone who calls the Senate immigration bill an "amnesty."

Ann Coulter is not happy with the Gang of Eight bill.

Could some GOP senators be waiting to stampede for or against the bill?  National Journal says so: "According to some Senate watchers, as many as 20 Republican Senators are eying each other, not wanting to be first out of the gate but willing to join a bloc of their own party if the bill is moving toward final passage with broad support."  Key question: which Senate watchers?

Economic Policy Institute:"the main problem in the labor market is a broad-based lack of demand for workers—and not, as is often claimed, available workers lacking the skills needed for the sectors with job openings."

Facts, Facts

At National Review, I note that, contrary to the promises of Senator McCain, the Gang of Eight bill will put convicted criminals on the path to citizenship.

UPDATE: In an op-ed published earlier this week, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) offers further warnings about the legalization of criminals:

The sponsors promised that those "with a serious criminal background or who pose a threat to our national security" would be ineligible for legal status. But the bill allows the Homeland Security secretary, under certain conditions, to grant it to gang members; those with major misdemeanor criminal convictions (including felonies pleaded to misdemeanors) for serious crimes, including drug offenses, sexual abuse and prostitution; those with arrest records of any length; fugitives from deportation orders; or those who have been deported and illegally reentered.

STEM Shortage?

One of the underlying premises of the Gang of Eight immigration bill is that this bill's guest-worker programs would cure a supposed shortage in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fields.  At the end of May, the Georgetown Public Policy Institute issued a report on the mixed employment prospects of new college graduates in the US.  This report's findings trouble the claim of a STEM shortage.

The report estimated that the unemployment rate of recent graduates with a a major in "computer and mathematics" fields was 9.1%.  For those in the engineering field, the unemployment rate was 7.4%.

Here are the unemployment rates for recent college graduates in some specific STEM majors according to this report:

• Information Systems 14.7%
• Computer Science 8.7%
• Mathematics 5.9%
• General Engineering 7%
• Civil Engineering 7.6%
• Electrical Engineering 7.6%
• Mechanical Engineering 8.1%

Clearly, the employment picture for many young Americans in STEM fields could be better.

Ramesh Ponnuru argued in Bloomberg yesterday that the GOP needs to address the economic concerns of young Americans.  A guest-worker plan that makes it harder for US citizens and legal immigrants to find employment could get in the way of that message.

Survey Says

A series of polls in Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana,  North Carolina, Ohio, and West Virginia shows that residents are very skeptical about the Gang of Eight bill.  In every state, significant majorities are opposed to the prospect of legalization before the guarantee of enforcement.  Significant majorities in every state also think that the bill's guest-worker plan is too expansive.  This polling might put new pressure on Mark Pryor (D-AR), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Rand Paul (R-KY), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Jon Tester (D-MT), Kay Hagan (D-NC), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Rob Portman (R-OH), and Joe Manchin (D-WV).

Media Games

Jonathan Strong has an interesting story on how effective Senator Rubio and the other members of the Gang of Eight have been in driving the media narrative over immigration reform:

The charismatic Rubio and his immigration gang are effortlessly driving the media coverage of the immigration bill, to the great frustration of the bill’s opponents, who are struggling to draw attention to what they consider the legislation’s deep and systemic flaws.
In past days, Rubio has said the bill doesn’t have enough votes and that he might even vote against it, prompting a frenzy of horse-race coverage that is drowning out most discussion about the substance of the bill. Opponents are convinced that Rubio’s remarks are a sideshow calculated to distract.
“It is no coincidence” that Rubio’s remarks about the bill’s not having enough votes were “made right after the leading GOP critics of the bill penned a Dear Colleague [letter] yesterday exhaustively detailing the scores of crippling flaws pervasive throughout the bill,” said an aide to one of the senators — Sessions, Cruz, Mike Lee (Utah) and Chuck Grassley (Iowa) — who wrote the letter.

The battle over process has been a major strategy for the Gang.  Senator Rubio's threat to walk away from the bill may make him seem more credible to the right and this threat also opens him up to criticism from the left, which might only further rally the right behind him and therefore make the passage of this bill even easier.  The appearance of a battle over immigration can make any "concessions" offered by the Gang of Eight appear more significant.


In a meeting with members of the House, Rubio continued to use a favored tactic by criticizing the bill that he sponsored, co-wrote, and publicizes:

Those in the meeting were struck by how little Rubio stuck up for his bill. There was “very little support for the Senate bill — even from Rubio,” a senior GOP aide said.
At one point, Rubio was asked why he became involved with the Gang of Eight in the first place. He said he joined to move the bill to the right, since the group would have passed a bill through the Senate whether or not he was a part of it.
Some in the meeting noted that if the bill would have easily passed with or without Rubio, his recent protestations that it can’t pass the Senate without fixes on border security didn’t carry much weight.

It does, I suppose, remain unclear how exactly, if the bill currently lacks 60 votes according to Rubio, it would have well over 60 votes if he hadn't supported it.

Meanwhile, Senator Cornyn has released the outline of a new border-security amendment that would keep the legalization-before-enforcement approach of the Gang of Eight but would delay citizenship until certain benchmarks have been met.

Doubling Guest Workers

The Center for Immigration Studies has released a report estimating that the number of guest workers would double under the Gang of Eight bill:

The Schumer-Rubio bill, which will be debated by the full Senate starting next week, would allow unprecedented increases in the number of temporary workers. A new Center for Immigration Studies analysis of the bill finds that, in the first year, the bill (S.744) would admit nearly 1.6 million more temporary workers than currently allowed. After that initial spike, the bill would increase annual temporary worker admissions by more than 600,000 each year over the current level – an increase four times larger than the one called for in the 2007 Bush-Kennedy proposal (about 125,000).
As a result, this bill would roughly double the number of temporary workers admitted each year (nearly 700,000 in 2012). These workers are classified as "non-immigrants" and would be in addition to S.744's large proposed increase in annual permanent legal immigrants competing for jobs (more than 30 million in the next decade).

Meanwhile, Senator Marco Rubio says that the Gang does not yet have 60 votes.

UCLA: A Very Disappointing "Recovery"

The Los Angeles Times has the details on an economic report put out by UCLA's Anderson Forecast:

"Growth in GDP has been positive, but not exceptional," UCLA economists wrote in their quarterly Anderson Forecast. "Jobs are growing, but not rapidly enough to create good jobs for all."
The report, which analyzed long-term trends of past recoveries, found that the long-anticipated "Great Recovery" has not yet materialized.
Real GDP growth — the value of goods and services produced after adjusting for inflation — is 15.4% below the 3% growth trend of past recoveries, wrote Edward Leamer, director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast. More robust growth will be necessary to bring this recovery in line with previous ones.
"It's not a recovery," he wrote. "It's not even normal growth. It's bad."

Investment Banks Moving into Real Estate

The NYT has a very interesting story suggesting that one of the reasons for rising home prices in certain areas is an infusion of Wall Street money:

Large investment firms have spent billions of dollars over the last year buying homes in some of the nation’s most depressed markets. The influx has been so great, and the resulting price gains so big, that ordinary buyers are feeling squeezed out. Some are already wondering if prices will slump anew if the big money stops flowing.
“The growth is being propelled by institutional money,” said Suzanne Mistretta, an analyst at Fitch Ratings. “The question is how much the change in prices really reflects market demand, rather than one-off market shifts that may not be around in a couple years.”
Wall Street played a central role in the last housing boom by supplying easy — and, in retrospect, risky — mortgage financing. Now, investment companies like the Blackstone Group have swooped in, buying thousands of houses in the same areas where the financial crisis hit hardest.
Blackstone, which helped define a period of Wall Street hyperwealth, has bought some 26,000 homes in nine states. Colony Capital, a Los Angeles-based investment firm, is spending $250 million each month and already owns 10,000 properties. With little fanfare, these and other financial companies have become significant landlords on Main Street. Most of the firms are renting out the homes, with the possibility of unloading them at a profit when prices rise far enough.

Is Lisa Murkowski Edging Toward the Gang of Eight?

This story from the Alaska Dispatch suggests that Senator Lisa Murkowski might be heading in that direction:

Murkowski said she supported the following: an immigration reform bill that provided a path for undocumented workers; a reform bill that reunites families; a bill that restores due process for individuals caught in the immigration system; and a bill that allows for guest worker programs and job opportunities for foreign, low-skilled workers.
She also was asked if she’d support a bill addressing the root problems of immigration; her answer wasn’t a straightforward affirmative. Addressing why people choose to migrate is difficult and likely will not be addressed in the current reform bill, she said.
“But Congress recognizes that people choose to come to America for opportunity, that their own countries’ economies are weak,” Murkowski said. “We’re looking to how we can make sure foreign economies are sound.”

Common Core Challenges

In the Weekly Standard, Jamie Gass and Jim Stergios cast a skeptical eye on Common Core.  They note some of the centralizing tendencies of this initiative:

The Department of Education then made adopting Common Core a condition for waivers from the No Child Left Behind Act’s accountability provisions, even though the national standards have never been approved by Congress and are, in fact, expressly prohibited by the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which defined the federal government’s role in K-12 education, the 1970 General Education Provisions Act, and the 1979 law establishing the U.S. Department of Education.

It is worth reminding our friends who call it a conservative policy that Common Core would have been a bridge too far even for President Johnson, who signed the ESEA, and President Carter, who signed the law creating the federal Department of Education.  As syndicated columnist George Will wrote last year about the push for Common Core, “Here again laws are cobwebs. As government becomes bigger, it becomes more lawless.”

The problems with what is now federal policy are not lost on state and local leaders.  In just the past few weeks, Indiana lawmakers agreed to pause implementation of Common Core.  Ditto in Pennsylvania. Michigan’s House of Representatives voted to defund the effort.  And the national standards are under fire in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Utah.

Nationally, the Republican National Committee recently adopted an anti-Common Core resolution, but opposition is bipartisan.  Many Democrats are troubled that Common Core is not based on research and ignores too much of what we know about how students learn.  American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten recently told the Washington Post, “Common Core is in trouble … There is a serious backlash in lots of different ways, on the right and on the left.”

The backlash is richly deserved.  The Common Core standards are academically inferior to the standards they replaced in high performing states; and they ignore empirical lessons of how states like Massachusetts achieved historic successes.  Neither local leaders nor their constituents like having policies force fed by Washington, especially when the new requirements amount to a massive, and possibly illegal, unfunded mandate.  Common Core’s troubles are just beginning.

Getting to 60

Harry Reid has boasted that he would have an easy time getting to 60 votes for the Gang of Eight's immigration bill.  I raise some doubts about that ease here.  Hot Air has some more thoughts on this topic.

Bernie Sanders Really Critical of Guest Worker Programs

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, was no fan of guest-worker programs in 2007, and he still sounds pretty skeptical today.  In an interview with Dylan Matthews, he raised some serious doubts about the program:

My concerns are in regards to where we stand in terms of guest workers programs, made worse by amendments offered by Senator Hatch. What I do not support is, under the guise of immigrant reform, a process pushed by large corporations which results in more unemployment and lower wages for American workers.
As you well know, we remain in the midst of a severe recession. Real unemployment, once you consider people who’ve given up looking for work, is close to 14 percent, and in some parts of the country is even higher. For minorities it’s very high, and we’ve got to address that. You have massively high unemployment for young people, yet we’re talking about expanding visas so that young people from abroad can serve as life guards, become ski instructors, become front desk people, when young people in this country desperately need jobs to pay for a college education.
I am aware that there may well be certain high-skilled jobs in specific areas in high skilled technical industries that American companies are finding it hard to fill. I find it hard to understand that, when nine million people in this country have degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields, only about three million have jobs in these areas.
Furthermore, as someone who was led to believe that what economics was about was supply and demand, if you need workers in a certain area, you need to raise wages. I have a hard time understanding the notion that there’s a severe need for more workers from abroad when wages for these jobs rose only 4.5 percent between 2000 and 2011. You see stagnant wages for high skilled workers, when these companies tell you that they desperately need high skilled workers. Why not raise wages to attract those workers?
The bottom line is that I feel, very much, that a lot of the initiative behind these guest workers programs, a very large expansion of guest worker programs — H2B visas would go up to as many as 195,000, H1B to as many as 205,000 a year — is coming from large corporations who want cheap labor from abroad. Absolutely, there is a need for foreign labor. I recognize that in agriculture and certain areas in the high tech industry, you need foreign labor. But this is a massive effort to attract cheap labor, a great disservice to American workers.

Time Machine: Democrats on Guest Workers in 2007

In National Review, I look at what Democrats had to say about guest-worker programs back in 2007.  They weren't fond of them.  Here's what Senator Boxer (CA) had to say about them back then:

These large employers want a large, cheap labor pool that they can draw from. My colleagues on the other side say: Oh, we are protecting those workers. Oh, they will be fine. No, they will not be fine. How many workers do you know ever in the history of America who have to leave after two years and wait a year to come back to a program, leave after the next two years, come back, and by the way, how powerless are these workers, these temporary guest workers? They know if they say one thing to criticize, perhaps, a manager or to complain or to beg for a sick day because they have a sick child at home, when they know they have no power, everything rides on their being able to come back into the country because the employer says they can come back in. We are setting up a system of exploitation. We are setting up a system with this generalized guest worker program, a system that will put downward pressure on the American worker.

Will Senator Boxer and other Democrats now support an immigration bill that even more radically expands the US's guest-worker programs?

Read the rest here.

Reaganomics Revised

Robert Mundell, a Nobel laureate and significant figure in conservative economic policy development, has come to the conclusion that "free trade" isn't exactly free:

 In an interview on the fringes of the Astana Economic Forum in Kazakhstan, Mundell did not pull his punches. One of the chief architects of Reaganomics and a lifelong advocate of trade liberalization, Mundell now raises a large question mark over the continued viability of free trade. “The United States can’t keep a completely open system if the rest of the world is less open,” he said. “The United States may have to take a leaf out of the book of Japan, China, and Germany, and have protectionism inside the system.”
He explained that though he opposes tariffs (because they would send the wrong signal and thus invite retaliation), America may have to resort to less overt protectionist measures. One such tactic would be to adopt Buy American policies in government procurement (such covert protectionism is virtually universal elsewhere among America’s most significant trade partners).
Mundell  believes outsourcing has gone too far and that America’s formerly world-beating industrial corporations are in danger of losing their ability to manufacture. He commented: “It has been a mistake to let U.S. manufacturing run down so low. While other nations have industrial policies to maximize their trade benefits, the United States leaves itself open like a naked woman. A big problem is with nations that may prove to be future enemies.”

In a neomercantilist world, so-called "free trade" policies could simply empower the protectionism of other nations.

Not Quite a Fracture

The Hill suggests that the Gang of 8 "fractured" over the issue of whether to give newly-legalized immigrants access to the earned income tax credit:

Graham and Flake supported an amendment sponsored by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to deny earned income tax credits (EITC) to people with Registered Provisional Immigrant Status (RPI).
An estimated 11 million illegal immigrants would gain RPI status under the immigration reform bill pending in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Schumer and Durbin voted no.
It failed on a party-line vote of 8 to 10.
“EITC is generally available to anyone who has a Social Security number and many are abusing that today we’ve discovered but as these RPIs are established and get a Social Security number, they will qualify it appears under the law for Earned Income Tax Credit,” Sessions said.

However, as Byron York reports, this might be less a real political fracture and more an orchestrated difference:

The situation was potentially embarrassing for Graham and Flake, who might not want to explain to their constituents that their bill gave federal benefits to newly-legalized immigrants. So it appears that the Gang had met and Democrats had given the two Republicans permission to support Sessions’ amendment. As the clerk was calling the roll for votes (at about 3:05 in the video), Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer, the de facto leader of the Gang, was heard turning to an aide and asking, “Do our Republicans have a pass on this one, if they want? Yes.”
They did indeed want. In a somewhat unusual show of Republican unity, Graham and Flake joined other Republicans to vote for the Sessions amendment. It didn’t matter — Democrats have a 10-to-8 majority on the committee and voted unanimously against Sessions’ amendment, meaning it was killed by a 10-to-8 margin. But the moment provided a glimpse of the degree to which Graham and Flake are working with Schumer in maneuvering the Gang of Eight bill through the Judiciary Committee.

No Scandal Is an Island

Some (e.g. Mickey Kaus) worry that the current obsession with scandals could undermine efforts to oppose the Gang of Eight bill.  Over at National Review, I raise some doubts about how much these scandals really will help the Gang's plans.

The Scandals of the Day and Big Government

In National Review, I argue that conservatives should keep their eye on the bigger implications of the IRS and DOJ scandals:

Contemporary progressivism depends upon faith in bureaucracy: to collect data, to manage daily affairs on the local and national levels, and to serve as an impartial arbiter of fairness. Many of the major initiatives of the Obama presidency — from Obamacare to his expansion of executive authority to comprehensive immigration reform — demand this bureaucratic faith.
So every scandal that reveals a bureaucracy’s capacity for corruption deals a methodological wound to this centralizing enterprise. While the president might deride those who fear the subversion of a free republic into a less-than-free state, these sorts of scandals — whatever their outcomes — reveal that such fears are hardly misplaced. After all, we now know that federal tax-collection authorities systematically targeted opponents of the reigning ideology. We now know that federal agents could blithely monitor the phone calls of journalists. Those are not the figments of tea-party paranoia; as far as we can tell, they are facts.
The way it looks at the moment, there are two possible impulses behind these scandals: malice or incompetence. Neither one bears good tidings for bureaucratic progressivism.

You can read the rest here.

And Ed Morrissey makes some further points along these lines.