Democrats step up calls to add immigration to budget plan

But James Wallner, a senior fellow at the R Street Institute, countered in a July 20 column that the Senate did not create a precedent at the time “because the Senate did not adjudicate the question at any point during its debate in 2005.”

“The Senate’s presiding officer did not rule that the bill’s initial immigration provisions were Byrd compliant,” Wallner wrote. “The full Senate did not adjudicate the question.”

As a result, he said, “claims that precedents authorize Democrats’ effort to give specific categories of illegal aliens lawful permanent resident status are incorrect.”