Senate Cloture Vote for Dream Act Fails

For some of you who has been busy sending faxes, phone calls and emails to your Senators, here's some good news. The Dream Act placed in the Department of Defense appropriations bill was a last ditch effort of Senator Harry Reid to get some added votes. If he was doing what his constituents wanted him to do, he wouldn't be losing the election! In my opinion, allowing amnesty to millions of illegals would be the same as granting amnesty to someone that had crawled through a window of your home at night while you were asleep and then let them live there and pay them benefits out of your paycheck to do it.

Thanks for all of your hard work in making phone calls and sending faxes the last 8 days.

The Senate just failed by a count of 56-43 to approve cloture, which would have allowed debate to begin on a Defense bill that Senate leaders hoped would include the DREAM Act amnesty.

Because it takes 60 votes for cloture, the Defense bill had to be pulled.

The insistence of Senate Majority Leader Reid (D-Nev.) in using the Defense bill as a vehicle for the amnesty was one of the key reasons why Republicans refused to allow debate on the bill.

Every Republican (except Sen. Murkowski of Alaska who was absent) voted NO.

Sen. Pryor of Arkansas looked to be the sole Democrat who would vote against Reid but, in the end, his fellow Arkansas Democrat Sen. Lincoln also voted NO.

It would be unfair to infer that every Democrat voting YES to start debate supports the DREAM amnesty. We know that on a direct up or down on the amnesty, many of the Democrats would have voted NO. But this opening cloture vote was one that pushed Democrats to show Party loyalty to just start the debate.

I really believe that many of you are in states where you had persuaded your Democratic Senator to vote NO on the DREAM amnesty amendment itself. Good work, all of you. 

I am sending this to you quickly just so you know that you can stop phoning and revel a little in your victory.

The amnesty threat has receded for the moment, although Sen. Reid promised he would bring the DREAM amnesty back up for a vote later this year. I'll talk later about that possibility.

For now, congratulate yourselves for your great work.