Washington shell game

If you don’t think special interests dominate American politics please explain how we find President George Bush and his diametric opposite, Sen. Ted Kennedy, singing the same song on the most provocative issue, other than Iraq, facing Americans these days.

They are as out of place as Felix Unger and Oscar Madison in Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple.”
 
The Bush-Kennedy axis is doing its best to promote the toothless Senate immigration bill, which would permit eventual citizenship to workers who sneak into this country illegally. Opponents of the bill call it amnesty. The bill also promotes a guest worker program, which is seen by many as an invitation to more furtive border crossings.

Actually there is no “axis” between the two. Neither would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the other on any known conscious issue. Only a matter like this could bring the two together. The hard right conservative president on the same side of a national topic with a left leaning liberal senator?

Why? Simple: A spoonful of special interests and a giant gulp of political expediency.

Mr. Bush never saw legislation, which favored business he did not like. For obvious reasons.  They bankroll Republican election campaigns. Illegal aliens are a boon to shady businesses, which profit immensely by exploiting those, who by their illegal status, gladly accept low wages and will not complain when labor laws are broken.

On the other hand, Mr. Kennedy never saw an underclass he didn’t embrace no matter how unjustified the cause. His reason is different. They are seen as potential votes for Democrats.

Furthermore, the Dems also like to play ball with business for the same reasons as the G.O.P., and the Republicans have the same instincts to find new voter support.

The crime is that neither party really gives a damn for the rapidly declining domestic middle class. On the knotty immigration issue both parties are in favor of the status quo, while the grass roots want something done to cut off the endless supply of cheap labor which is lowering wages – and increasing the cost of public services – across the board for all Americans.

This leads to the devious congressional maneuver recognized by many as a political shell game. They let the voters think they are doing one thing, when in fact they are doing the exact opposite or, even more sinister, nothing at all.

Example: How many times in one lifetime have we been told that Congress is simplifying the tax codes. Whenever that is said smart taxpayers zip up their wallets and hold onto their hats because when Congress is finished “simplifying” we are saddled with more complicated and chaotic tax forms when April 15 rolls around.

The shell game scheme on alien legislation is easy to discern. Congress tries to look busy working on a solution while it really is hoping for a stalemate. First the House of Representatives passes a bill aimed at closing the big holes through which pour millions of illegal workers in the more than 2,000 mile border between Mexico and the U.S. and the 4,000 mile border with Canada. Further, they criminalized undocumented workers making border crossing a felony and include no provision for amnesty for those already here.

Then the Senate passes a softer bill featuring what is considered amnesty for those illegals in the country for five years or more, plus an unworkable provision for millions of other Mexicans to leave the country and then come back after a time away. Nobody believes that will work either. How do you determine how long a person is in the country when there is no proof of their arrival?

The next step is to go to conference to work out a compromise bill, but neither the Senate nor the House intends to accommodate the other, making the issue irreconcilable. No compromise means no law.

And that is what both sides really want so they can go back to their respective constituents and report, “We tried, but could not work out an agreement with the other house.”  There it is, the old shell game.

That means that the scandalous employment of illegal aliens will continue dragging down wages for legal workers and pumping up profits for the bosses who are exploiting them. Business interests win, anyone working for a living loses, and America becomes a permanent haven for an imported underclass.

Is this what was intended by the inscription on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free?”

Send an Email Letter to Courier Editor - be sure to include your telephone number.