GOP plots blue-slip attack (may stop Immigration Bill) [View All]

[maddezmom]

Source: The Hill

May 30, 2007
House conservatives are ready to stop the Senate immigration bill in its tracks with a potent procedural weapon should the contentious measure win passage in the upper chamber.

The trump card conservatives may hold is a constitutional rule that revenue-related bills must originate in the House. The Senate immigration measure requires that illegal immigrants pay back taxes before becoming citizens, opening the door to a House protest, dubbed a “blue slip” for the color of its paper.



House Republicans used the same back-taxes mandate for a blue-slip threat that derailed last year’s immigration conference. The new Senate bill still must survive two more weeks of voter scrutiny and contentious amendments, but several conservatives already are lying in wait for the Senate to “make the same mistake twice,” as one House GOP aide put it.

“If we get an opportunity to do it, believe me, we’ll do it,” the aide said. “I think it’s going to be a matter of who will get there first. A number of people in the House are dying to be fingered as the person who killed .”

As the bill’s Senate supporters spend the recess fighting a wildfire of grassroots resistance to the immigration deal, which held together after an intense first week, some House Republicans are unconvinced by outreach from their Senate brethren. They acknowledge that a blue slip may be their only recourse to stop a process they believe Democrats will dominate in conference.




Read more: http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/gop-plots-blue-slip-attack-2007-05-30.html