February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
These bolts happen with remarkable frequency, especially in election years. The compromise reached just before the Easter recess was never really one by definition. It was more of a pact reached by a group of senators who more or less agreed on what needed to be accomplished this side of a mid-term vote that will cover one third of the Senate, and the entire House of Representatives.
Outside the pact group were other senators who had strongly diverging views. Yeats could have scripted what happened next. The centrist pact could not hold under pressure from the sides and it duly fell amid a clamor of invective and finger pointing. There was noting beautiful in the outcome. But it wasn’t entirely terrible either.
A few days from now senators, will gather again and the pressure to do something will only have increased. The reform issue, no matter what way people see it, is close to boiling point. Some of the biggest street rallies in years have made this starkly evident.
Doing nothing and merely long-fingering reform is not what is now needed. The core of a deal in the Senate has been revealed and should now be revived, initially in Arlen Specter’s judiciary panel.
After that, the House and Senate must forge a bill that deals with all aspects of the immigration issue, not least border security.
The last thing we all need is a summer of even greater discord. Immigration reform is an issue that will not go away just because it is difficult, or supposedly too hot to handle in an election year.