What is going on behind the scenes with the Senate immigration bill

John Hawkins has a report from his source in the Senate about the atmosphere there and what has been going on with the Senate immigration bill. What seems clear is that supporters of the bill are scrambling to find a way to pass it without allowing much daylight into what is in the bill.

Then on Wednesday morning, the bill was out on the internet and bloggers started picking it apart and that morning around 10 AM, Reid pulled the bill so it could be re-drafted because he said there were mistakes in it. They spent almost the whole morning drafting it and when they re-released it, it was 400 pages long. That means that it's likely when the vote occurs tomorrow, not a single senator voting on the bill will have had an opportunity to actually read it. Reid's response to complaints about that has basically been, "Trust me." My source told me that the general response to that from the anti-amnesty senators has been something akin to, "Yeah, right."

My source then emphasized how ridiculous this whole process has been. You had a few senators getting together in secret to write the bill and then they tried to ram it through before anybody could read it. However, because the bill was held over the Memorial Day break, it failed cloture and died the first time. Then it was brought back this Tuesday, by using an arcane maneuver in a way that has never happened before in the history of the Senate. Most conservatives were locked out of presenting amendments on the bill and now, we have a bill that was again, written in secret, that none of the Senators have read, that the "grand bargainers" are trying to shove through in less than 48 hours. In short, this whole process, from top to bottom, has been a complete joke and it's shameful that the Republican leadership in the Senate is cooperating with Harry Reid to run roughshod over conservatives on this issue.

Some senators seem to be wavering about what they're going to. They're still getting nonstop calls in their offices from constituents against the bill. Apparently, they just can't stand that. Constituents are all well and good when it's election time or when they can contribute money. But they sure don't like to hear from the people when the people are all riled up about something the Masters of the Universe want to push through.