The U.S. Senate has managed to pass an immigration reform bill. Now it goes to the House of Representatives, where conservative Republicans, obstructionists, anti-immigration zealots, John Boehner and his band of meanies will undoubtedly do everything they can to stymie it. But there is, in fact, a way to get the bill through, even without the \u201cmajority of the majority\u201d that Boehner is insisting on.\u00a0 The strategy is called a discharge petition.<\/p>\n
At the Maddow Blog, Steve Benen explains the discharge petition<\/a> this way:<\/p>\n As a rule, the only bills that reach the House floor for a vote are the ones House leaders allow to reach the floor. But there’s an exception: if 218 members sign a discharge petition, their preferred legislation is brought up for a vote whether the majority party’s leadership likes it or not.<\/p>\n In terms of specific numbers, there are 201 Democrats in the House caucus. If literally all of them are prepared to support the bipartisan Senate bill, they would need 17 House Republicans — just 7% of the 231 GOP House members — to join them on the discharge petition. If, say, 10 conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats from Southern states balked, they would need 27 Republicans to break party ranks.<\/p>\n Just last week, we were told they were as many as 40 House Republicans<\/a> who consider themselves moderates, unhappy with their party’s far-right direction. Is there a chance half of these alleged centrists might sign a discharge petition and get immigration reform done? Sure there is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I\u2019m usually not a fan of legislative and procedural tricks, but for this worthy cause\u2014immigration reform\u2014I\u2019d made an exception.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to be against the tactic that enabled the 1964 Civil Rights Act<\/a> to pass, right?<\/p>\n