The GOP had a chance to get Trump’s border wall (and much, more) back in 2007. They blew it.
The federal government is currently taking in more than 200 children a day, with many of them placed in a former Walmart near the southern border. Last week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ citation of the Bible as justification for the zero-tolerance policy on immigration enforcement that led to this state of affairs outraged liberals and religious leaders. Former first lady Laura Bush has voiced her opposition to the policy.
Her husband was president the last time there was a chance for sweeping immigration reform. The machinations that led to that bill’s failure are worth revisiting now.
Eleven years ago, I was fresh out of college and answering phones for a senator. Little did I know that a month into the gig, part of my job would be taking thousands of angry phone calls a week, a trial by fire. My former boss, Arizona’s Jon Kyl, was the lead GOP negotiator on a sweeping immigration reform bill with the late Ted Kennedy (D-MA.) It was called “the last, best chance to overhaul America’s immigration laws.”
Pretty much every attempt at immigration reform in the decade since has been doomed from the start, but the 2007 Kyl-Kennedy bill is perhaps the closest we’ve gotten. Writing here at THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Fred Barnes put it this way:
Well, a decade later, the vast majority of those 12 million are still here. And now with the economy growing again, a problem that had receded a bit is growing yet again.
But let’s back up. Republicans got a better deal without the world’s best negotiating mind? And without controlling either chamber in Congress? Yes. Given that Democrats were willing to negotiate with an eager President Bush, how did this unlikely shot at success fail?
An amendment to sunset a guest-worker program proposed by Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and backed by organized labor is what sunk the bill. Of course, a year before a presidential election, it had the support of Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama (Bernie Sanders, too). But also supporting it were Richard Shelby, Jeff Sessions, Bob Corker, Mike Enzi, Jim Inhofe, John Thune and five other Republicans. Why would 11 not-labor-friendly senators give such a gift to big labor?
It wasn’t because they were truly trying to show they were willing to compromise, but because they wanted to kill the bill. And they did. Along with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. They sided with organized labor against 37 Senate Republicans and 11 Democrats, including Dianne Feinstein and Ted Kennedy. In the end, the poison pill amendment passed 49-48 and brought the whole immigration bill down.
Since then, the Senate has become all but dysfunctional since Harry Reid’s first year as majority leader. A lot of that is his fault, and Republicans, after retaking the Senate, have further eroded the sense of order and tradition the Senate—at least historically—was known for.
One vote, be it by Shelby, Corker, Enzi, Inhofe, or Thune, the remaining GOP senators who helped kill Kyl-Kennedy, could have given conservatives everything President Trump is asking for, and more. One vote, be it by one of the 15 Democrats still in the Senate who voted for Dorgan’s poison pill, could have solved the decades-long puzzle about how to legalize the presence of 12 million people in the country illegally. And potentially—it’s hard to know how the Kyl-Kennedy system would have played out in reality—even prevented what many are saying is a humanitarian crisis on the U. S.-Mexico border.
Make no mistake. All knew that passing Dorgan’s amendment was a poison pill. Their party leaders pushing for Kyl-Kennedy made that abundantly clear. All knew they could have taken a major step toward fixing the myriad problems posed by our immigration policies.
But they didn’t.
Sixteen of the Democrats and Republicans who voted against Dorgan’s poison pill are still there. I wonder, what has a decade of the Senate done to them since?
And with 20 senators who supported Dorgan’s poison pill still in the Senate, I’m not very optimistic that these folks learned the error of their ways and will lead the newcomers that have joined the upper chamber since then toward a fair compromise now.
Today, as their staffers write press releases, speeches, and tweets about what’s going on the border, I wonder if those senators are thinking: What could we have done to prevent this?
Or will they justify their vote to sink immigration reform because who could have foreseen that satisfying the whims of labor unions meant more than separating migrant children from their families. Better yet, will the voters even remember?
I hope so.
