Thread by @crampell

The Senate parliamentarian is planning to hear dueling arguments Friday over whether Democrats can include a pathway to legal status for certain undocumented immigrants in their reconciliation bill, per Politico politi.co/3nf4oO3

Provision would affect revenues (immigration processing fees; higher tax revenues from legalized immigrants) & spending (eligibility for govt benefits). Q parliamentarian will decide is whether budgetary effects are merely "incidental" to nonbudgetary components of the provision

Pro-immigration folks point to 2005 reconciliation bill that passed the Senate & included some immigration provisions as precedent. But, no lawmaker raised a point of order challenging the provision on Byrd Rule grounds, so we never learned how parliamentarian would have ruled

Sen Byrd himself didn't like the provision, and proposed an amendment to replace it with something else (which failed). BUT he did not raise a point of order to challenge it under his namesake rule. Maybe that's because he didn't think it failed the test? Who knows.

In any case, there's no binding precedent here. While I hope the current parliamentarian allows the path-to-citizenship provisions to remain -- this seems to be the only path to any immigration reform, & DACA is in serious danger -- that outcome seems like far from a sure thing.

True, would be damning if McConnell/Cornyn opposed it on Byrd Rule grounds this time around. But McConnell has had no qualms about similarly hypocritical behavior in the past. Besides, his hypocrisy wouldn't affect how parliamentarian evaluates the issue

https://twitter.com/pboogaard/status/1435730092269899781

Again, I hope provision stays in. It creates billions of $$ of budgetary effects, so plausible it could survive a Byrd bath. But criteria are vague + evaluation is subjective. Dems need a Plan B (maybe ways to modify language, so it becomes more Byrd-friendly?) if this goes south