Saturday, June 9, 2007 | 7:32 a.m.
WASHINGTON - As the immigration debate neared a breaking point one night in the middle of last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid placed an 11 p.m. phone call to one of President Bush's top emissaries on this issue, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.
Reid requested help. Bush has made immigration his signature domestic policy issue and Reid needed help getting recalcitrant Republicans on board.
He was also setting the stage for blame.
As Reid recounted the call many times the next day, he said to Chertoff: "Tell the president, he better get his Republican colleagues to help on his bill. I told him, 'The headline is going to be The president fails again.' "
The bill, indeed, failed as 12 Democrats and all but seven Republicans cast votes that scuttled it for now.
Reid found some success in blaming Bush for being unable to bring his party in line.
And in some ways, Reid was right: More than two-thirds of Senate Democrats backed the bill, while Republicans stood beside their most conservative members , who refused to back down, saying they needed more time for debate.
But try as he might, Reid is having difficulty blaming Republicans alone.
Voters want action on immigration, and majorities tell pollsters they are even willing to accept compromises that include legalizing the country's 12 million illegal immigrants .
By failing to pass legislation, the Senate Reid leads risks giving Democrats the same do-nothing label that poisoned the Republican-led Congress last year.
Norm Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said failing to act on a bill so widely watched leaves Reid and Democrats teetering close to voter discontent.
"It takes them away from the goal of the do-something Congress," Ornstein said. "They ran against the do-nothing Congress and they've got to show it's not them."
As the bill collapsed late Thursday, Reid backed away from what had been his strict timeline for the bill. Republicans argued that the timeline set the legislation on its collision course. Some Republicans say Reid purposely derailed the bill so he could lash out at Bush and their party. Reid's office dismisses such criticism and says Republicans were putting up endless delays.
The Nevada Democrat promised to have the Senate revisit the issue later in this session.
"I'm not always right, and I acknowledge that," Reid said on the floor.
In many ways the unlikely coalition of Democrats and Republicans who pledged to press on with the debate may be attempting the impossible.
The bill is unlikely to ever draw support from conservative Republicans and some moderate Democrats who cannot accept what they deride as amnesty - which is actually a lengthy and complicated process to provide legal status for the illegal residents already here.
Nor is the legislation likely to win backing from some liberal Democrats who oppose plans to create a temporary workforce, which some believe will depress wages, create second-class citizens and limit union efforts at organizing.
The optimism of the coalition supporting the bill lies with such lawmakers as Nevada's John Ensign. The Republican senator has supported many aspects of the changes, to the dismay of conservative bloggers who have accused him of going soft on the issue.
Ensign believes Congress needs to provide some path to legal residency for those here illegally, including as many as 200,000 Hispanics in Nevada. But he voted against the bill as not being strict enough.
"I was get able on this," Ensign said, explaining that he could have been persuaded to change his vote. He said he wanted to deny Social Security benefits accrued by workers using false documents and impose stricter requirements before immigrants could become residents or receive welfare, among other changes.
"We've been on this bill for 2 1/2 weeks and people are going, oh yeah, that's a problem, we have got to fix that," he said. "I was actually a person that wanted to vote for it, but the flaws are too serious."
Even if the bill gets another turn in the Senate, its prospects in the House remain in question.
Republicans said Bush planned to visit the Hill next week to rally support, but it's unclear whether the unpopular president at the end of his term will have the kind of influence with this party that he had earlier in his administration.
Reid himself acknowledged late Friday that "it's going to be hard to put the package back together again." He said he might instead peel off less controversial provisions.
As the debate got under way Thursday morning, back in Las Vegas, Frank Perna was already awake, steaming about the standoff, and dialing the Sun.
Congress has to do more to enforce the rules, said Perna, a retired mechanic and Army veteran. More important , he said, Congress has to do something - or let ordinary people decide.
"Maybe we should have been voting on this because our political system is failing," said Perna, who registers with neither party. "I'm ashamed of both of them."
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