We have an editorial up on the travesty of trying to pass an amnesty via reconciliation. Two points we didn’t get to.
- The Left cites as precedent a 2005 budget bill that passed the Senate under reconciliation containing an immigration measure. But this provision was cited as a potential violation of the Byrd rule (page 66 here) and certainly would have been struck out of the bill if someone had objected. It only remained because no one did (as can be seen in the list in this CRS report, page 28, item 15).
- Another way that the Democrat gambit runs afoul of the Byrd rule involves the committee jurisdictions, as Chris Jacobs explains in this valuable piece.
Long story short, amnesty in reconciliation should be a complete nonstarter.
This article was originally published by Nationalreview.com. Read the original article here.