Tuesday Update on Senate Effort to Pass DREAM Act Amnesty

By Roy Beck, Tuesday, December 14, 2010, 12:00 PM EST - posted on NumbersUSA

My gut feeling is still that we ought to be able to defeat the House-passed Dream Act amnesty when it comes up for a vote in the Senate later this week.

But . . .

Do you really want to rely on my gut?

The PRO-amnesty TV network Univision is reporting that the DREAM Act amnesty is 4 votes short of the 60 needed for passage.  Mass. Sen. Brown's courageous announcement of his NO vote at a Salvation Army fundraiser yesterday puts Senate passage of the House-passed amnesty farther out of reach.  But the PRO-amnesty forces claim they have already processed 160,000 phone calls into Congress.  And groups of PRO-amnesty clergy are meeting with Undeclared Senators to explain how a moral person would vote. Sen. Reid is threatening to bring the Senate back after Christmas to try to ensure that the amnesty passes.

Here's my full update for today . . .

• Pro-amnesty forces claim they are only one vote short of victory. I really believe this is part of their two-year-long bluff to try to make themselves seem like they have momentum in order to perhaps frighten some Senators to join the "winning" team. Nonetheless, their claim is unnerving. We can't afford to do anything but take it seriously. The pro-amnesty TV network Univision is reporting 4 votes short of 60, with several still Undeclared. That is scary enough.
• Sen. Brown says NO! That's the best news from yesterday. He was the Republican whom the pro-amnesty forces claimed was going to get them to the 60-vote victory mark. (See more details below.) Congratulations to all you activists in Massachusetts.
• Senate isn't going home at end of week. Senate Majority Leader Reid had earlier indicated he wouldn't keep Senators in session until Christmas Eve like he did last year. Typically, Congress adjourns before Thanksgiving to allow the nation to feel safe at least for the month of December. Reid was supposedly going to let the Senate go home at the end of this week. (The newly elected Congress takes over Jan. 5.) If the Congress adjourned at the end of this week, it was going to be hard to shoe-horn the DREAM Act amnesty debate and vote in between all the giant have-to business. But now, it looks like the Senate is staying in session until next week and maybe until next Thursday the 23rd. Bad news for us.[MORE]