Campaign Action
Following last week's debacle of a debate on immigration legislation, which was engineered to fail by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake says in an op-ed in The Washington Post that he will try again.
[W]hen the Senate reconvenes next week, the first action I will take will be to introduce a bill extending DACA protections for three years and providing $7.6 billion to fully fund the first three years of the administration's border-security proposal. I’ll be the first to admit this “three for three” approach is far from a perfect solution, but it would provide a temporary fix by beginning the process of improving border security and ensuring DACA recipients will not face potential deportation. […]
In the days following the introduction of this DACA extension, I'll be on the floor to offer a unanimous-consent request for an up-or-down vote. I can’t promise that one of my colleagues won't object—effectively blocking such a vote—but I promise that I'll be back on the floor, again and again, motioning for a vote until the Senate passes a bill providing relief to those struggling.
Some Republican senators are looking at the next government shutdown deadline of March 24 (because of course there's another one next month because that's how they do this) as the next opportunity to try to force their visions for "reform." So despite McConnell's worst efforts to kill this and deport all the Dreamers already, his own conference doesn't seem prepared to let that happen.
Since this is what's going to happen, Democrats should be prepared to match Flake, to go on the floor and offer their request for an up-or-down vote on a clean Dream Act, repeatedly. Every day.