Arlen Specter: “it is a little surprising to find this budget point of order being raised so late in the proceedings. We have been on…”

“it is a little surprising to find this budget point of order being raised so late in the proceedings. We have been on this bill now for almost 2 weeks. We expect to finish up either late tonight or tomorrow for the 2-week period which was allocated. So had there been a judgment that this bill should fall on a budget point of order, it would have been expected to have been raised much earlier to save the Senate some time. We have the same parties raising this objection who have raised earlier objections in what is an effort to defeat the bill. They have a right to offer amendments which may be poison pills or may be killer amendments or to raise a budget point of order, but when we are dealing with the vagaries of the Budget Act, we are talking about a $5 billion expenditure, 10-year periods beginning in the year 2016, through 2055. We are dealing in concepts that are not very tangible. And when compared to the importance of this immigration bill, those arcane tactics and procedures are not nearly as weighty as getting some action on this important bill. I made the argument--Senator Kennedy followed through on it--that the problem is that this calculation deals with expenditures and not with offsetting revenues. And the expenditures in the first 10 years, CBO says, are $54 billion, and the revenues are $66 billion, for a net gain of $12 billion.…”