Yesterday, the House passed the DREAM Act -- which would grant legal status to the children of undocumented immigrants who completed two years of college or joined the military. The 216-198 vote wasn't pre-ordained. In fact, the pre-vote whip counts suggested the legislation might fail by as much as 20 votes. Instead, it passed. 208 Democrats and eight Republicans voted for it. 160 Republicans and 38 (mostly Blue Dog) Democrats voted against it. Seventeen of those Democrats won't be back next year. Anyone who votes against children like this can go to hell. Good riddance.
Of the Republicans who voted for DREAM, only two are coming back -- Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Notice something about those two? In fact, of the eight Republican "yes" votes, five of them came from the current GOP's only five non-white members -- Joseph Cao (Asian), both Mario and Lincoln Diaz-Balart (Latino), Ros-Lehtinen (Latina), and Charles Djou (Asian).
With the House on the board, Reid decided to ditch the Senate version of the DREAM Act in order to pass the House version. That way, the chambers can avoid reconciliation and get the bill straight to the president's desk. In order to do that, they had to table the existing Senate version of the bill, which was originally scheduled for a vote today.
Democrats asked for unanimous consent to table it, but Republicans blocked that. Of course.
Note the GOP's gambit -- they've been screaming that DADT and DREAM shouldn't have a vote until they get their tax cut giveaway. Democrats say, "Okay, we're not going to have a vote on DREAM until next week." And what do Senate GOPers do? They demand a vote.
So Republicans are only against a DREAM vote if Democrats are for it. Once Democrats are against a DREAM vote, then Republicans are for it.
These are the assholes that we're supposed to be negotiating with. There isn't a lick of good faith in them. Not a fleck of it.
The Senate will take up the House version of the DREAM act next week. Still no word on when, exactly.
One last note: Check out clever DREAMers deliver giant checks for $2.3 billion to key members of Congress. The GAO reported last week that the DREAM Act would generate $2.3 billion in new revenue over the next 10 years, while lowering the deficit by $1.4 billion. Of course, fake deficit hawks don't care, since it turns out that undocumented youth aren't usually millionaires.
Update: Rep. Howard Berman rocks it on the floor of the House supporting DREAM: