While most of the media has focused on scandals and tornadoes, the Senate has taken the unusual step of actually getting some real work down using regular order. Late yesterday the Senate Judiciary Committee finished mark up on the immigration reform bill and approved it in a vote of 13 to 5.

No other part of our government’s bureaucracy, including our tax system and health care system, is seen as more broken than our immigration system. It is viewed as almost uniquely dysfunctional.

Members of the Gang of Eight have drawn a clear line in the sand over a pathway to citizenship. Any bill that provides for legal status without an eventual pathway to citizenship will doom reform.

After months of bipartisan negotiations the Senate Gang of Eight has finally released their immigration reform bill. You can read the entire 844 pages of the bill here. The all encompassing bill covers a range of immigration, employment and border security issues.

It would seem the American people only fall into two camps when it comes to undocumented immigrants. There is a small fraction who strongly oppose letting them stay in any way and the large majority who would support offering a pathway to citizenship.

I hope Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is going to have lots of bottled water on hand, because he is going to have a very dry mouth after doing more than the Full Ginsburg this Sunday.

A new WSJ/NBC poll shows just how important the messaging around immigration reform is for getting the Republican base, and presumably Republican members of Congress, on board for any piece of legislation.

The immigration reform process is moving slower than many of its prime supporters expected. Initially, the hope was to have bipartisan immigration reform proposals released at the beginning of this week in both the Senate and House, which now seems unlikely.

The single most important question about a possible immigration reform bill is whether or not Congressional Republicans are really prepared to defy their base for the political good of the party. The prospects of anything happening hinge entirely on this one question.

In both the Senate and the House bipartisan groups are very close to releasing draft immigration reform bills. It is possible we could see some preliminary legislative language as early as next week.

In the Senate the Gang of Eight resolved a major sticking point about guest workers, which should allow the group to finish their draft proposal. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told Meet the Press that all the major policy issues have been resolved and they should finish drafting all the possible legislative language this week. If the gang agrees to the draft language it is expected to move quickly to committee.