No. of Recommendations: 4
What are the odds that Kamala signs the 90% Republican "bipartisan immigration bill"?
Zero. The bill was introduced during the current session of Congress. If the bill isn't presented to the President for signature during that session, it is dead and must be reintroduced in the next session. If elected, Harris will not be President until after the next session of Congress has begun. So she will never be able to sign that bill.
That's the technically correct answer - which is the best kind of correct. But we can go further and think about a possible replacement bill.
The bill that Trump ordered his minions to kill was the result of some compromise. It was initially part of a larger foreign aid package (mainly Ukraine). That was the best shot at getting it through. Democrats would agree to some things on the border that they might not like in order to get the aid to Ukraine. Republicans would agree to Ukraine aid in order to get tougher border restrictions. When that one died, it was kept on life support trying to stand on its own. That had virtually no chance of passage.
Now, would a President Harris sign some kind of immigration bill? Absolutely. But it will need to be a bill that a broader swath of Democrats can support as well as enough Republicans in the Senate to get past the filibuster rules there. In the Democrats' dream world, they'll control the Senate with a 3 or 4 or maybe 5 seat majority. (One or 2 seats is the more realistic best case, and any majority at all is far from certain.) But it takes 60 votes to advance a bill. There is no way that the Democrats will have that kind of majority in the Senate. So it will still need bipartisan support. How that support arrives is anyone's guess. But one more likely scenario is tying it to something else (foreign aid, taxation, defense spending, who knows) that one of the parties really, really, wants.
--Peter
