You still have the legislative history scrambled. The second weaker bill was the bill the Senate had already passed and Trump has signed it into law. So no further ‘pressing’ was needed on that weaker bill.
It is a political fact of life that Trump occupies the Oval Office and that the Republicans have more votes than we do in the Senate. Precisely how do you expect Pelosi to press them to do something they don’t want to do? The House can block something the Senate wants but can’t force the Senate to do anything. Vice versa for the Senate…they can block things the House wants to do but can’t force the House to do anything. The Democrats could have stood on their moral high ground and refused the senate bill but meanwhile the children would not get whatever help that bill would give them. The actual choice available was not between a poor bill and a better bill but between a poor bill and no bill.
If you know about the promise from Pence you knew thebill you were claiming was not pressed was indeed passed. So stop misrepresenting what happened just to stir up animosity against Pelosi.
Pelosi trusts Pence about as far as she could throw the Washington Monument. She also knows that if the children continue to be abused she has solid grounds on which to report that Pence has acted in bad faith. That could be important later.
Ideal outcome? Nowhere near. Making the best out of a bad situation Pelosi has a damn good record.
Leadership requires troops. We are a mite shy in the Senate. That sucks but pretending that our leadership sucks because they can’t perform miracles is ridiculous.
The people who failed were the voters who elected the Repubicans who are committing these atrocities.
I also notice that all the senators running for president didn’t vote. Maybe they were heading for Miami, but their absence is also the reason why the House bill received very little attention and help.
It was the Senate Bill that was passed. Those four wanted modification to the Senate Bill for guarantees that money would be spent for the intended purposes.
Might be worth recalling that the Senate passed the bill by 84 votes to 8.
Because the Republicans were voting in a bill McConnell approved of and brought to the floor.
What you are describing is what I would call a forlorn hope. And even if the Senate caved and passed the House version so they could campaign on the Fourth, how likely is it that Trump would sign it?
the Republicans have more votes than we do in the Senate.
… can’t explain the lop-sided Senate vote.
Not sure what you’re referring to here. All I described (and only in raw numerical terms) was a Senate vote.
I do agree with you that Pelosi had the customary No Good Options, but I’m not sure about the notion that in this instance she made the best of a bad thing.
One other quick note: That NYT column which purports to tell us (once again) what Pelosi thinks of Tlaib, Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley, and Omar, was penned by … Maureen Dowd. The column does include some (ostensible) quotes from Pelosi, and they are troubling, but still … I wouldn’t take Maureen Dowd’s synthesis seriously for all the tea in China.
Their absence changed nothing since the Democrats would still be in the minority and McConnell was not about to bring anything up unless he was sure of his votes.
Instead of attacking our own. – either Pelosi or the four… we ought to be trying to figure out how to use the defects of the Senate bill to make McConnell less popular than he already is in Kentucky.
As in: We are already spending 750 dollars a day for the care of these children and what are we getting for it? Those children are being treated in ways you woukdn’t treat a puppy. McConnell is willing to throw more money at the problem but not to pass a law with teeth to see that that money goes where it should and that anyone who abuses those children is punished. Ditch Mitch.
What I mean is that if the House bill was what most Dems want, the senators can help promote it both in Senate and in public. If it wasn’t, Pelosi had no choice but to bring the Senate bill to the floor. I think it’s unlikely to hear criticism of the bill in the future except from the four members, because the senators who missed the vote are not in a good position to judge it.
You were suggesting that if we held up the House recess for the Fourth there might have been movement on the Republican side. That seems a forlorn hope.
The lopsided vote was not because the Republican Senators would have been willing to vote for something better ( their leanings are irrelevant anyway as long as McConnell controls what comes to the floor) but because the Demicratic Senators decided something was better than nothing.
When they get a lopsided number of signatures on a discharge petition for a better bill let me know.
Um, and your point is? Both houses have to pass something for it to become law. The House passed their own version of a border bill while knowing that the Senate almost certainly would not take it up because this lets the people who are interested see what we would do if we could. The House then passed the Senate bill because that was the only bill with a prospect of becoming law.
You talked about an alleged failure to press two bills. These were the only two bills out there in this topic. So, what were you talking about?
Wait! You think the Republican Senators are sufficiently open to persuasion to force McConnell to do something he doesn’t want to do?
The more effective place for the Senators to criticize the bill and the situation is on the campaign trail. They will get by far more coverage.
Keeping abreast of the nature of legislation is a primary reason that Congress has staff abs that is not affected bynwhetherbthe Senator is in DC or not.
Ezra Levin, co-director of the progressive advocacy group Indivisible, suggested it was ridiculous of Pelosi to agree to the vote even as she gives President Donald Trump a free pass on impeachment proceedings and McConnell has shown no inkling of caving to Democrats on any of their key legislative items.
“Pelosi, who is blocking Judiciary impeachment proceedings,” said Levin in a tweet, “now unilaterally caves to McConnell’s demands on the bad immigration bill. Not clear why she was so eager to become Speaker – seems happy acting like a Minority Leader.”
I thought they could persuade their fellow Dems. While they still might not have enough votes, the media and the public would have noticed it. That said, with so many Dem senators voting for it, persuasion might not work anyway.
I also think that if the senators refused/avoided to get on record with their votes, they can’t oppose it fiercely on the campaign trail because they’ll be asked “Where were you? What have you done?” Maybe that’s why few/none of them have talked about it yet.
Congress kept handing George W. more and more money to hire more and more agents. When gifted with 5000 CBP openings, they kept lowering the qualification bar to find enough people to fill the positions. This is how the agency became filled with neo-nazis, white supremacists, and rejects who were even too damaged to become Mayberry cops. So Nancy “Neville Chamberlain” Pelosi, let’s throw more money out there for the gestapo to use.
