Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/senate-torn-on-immigration-bill Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript The Senate has yet to reach a compromise on an immigration reform bill after a procedural vote failed Thursday. A congressional journalist discusses key sticking points in the debate. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. JUDY WOODRUFF: And now for the latest on the stall of the immigration bill in the Senate, we turn to Fawn Johnson. She has been tracking the bill's progress for Congress Daily, a newsletter published by the National Journal Group.Fawn Johnson, there's word late today a deal may be in the offing, but it's been stalled today. And for those of us who don't follow the minutia of the Senate procedures, help us understand what's going on. FAWN JOHNSON, Reporter, Congress Daily: Well, it's really fairly simple. The leaders of the Senate and then the negotiators who put together this bill are just trying to craft a game plan to finish the debate.There are a number of Republicans who are claiming that they didn't get their say in committee and they would like to have some amendments. There are Democrats and Republicans on both sides who are upset with how the debate has gone so far.There's another vote that's set for tonight. There is an expectation that that vote will allow the debate to go forward some more. It's all very fluid, and nobody is quite sure how it's going to go in the end. But the idea is to just keep the process moving. JUDY WOODRUFF: Is this what was expected? Because, going in, we were told "fragile compromise," but the expectation was it had a good shot at passing. FAWN JOHNSON: And I think that's still the case. It's become much more fragile over the last, I'd say, 24 hours. There have been a couple of amendments that have been accepted unexpectedly by the Senate that have actually caused the group of core negotiators — we call them the grand bargainers, because this compromise bill is a grand bargain — even they can't accept.So as part of the negotiations to finish this debate, what they're trying to do is they're trying to tinker with some of those amendments. There's one that Democrats are very upset about; there's one that Republicans are very upset about. And that's all part of the negotiations, as well as what kinds of amendments can they vote on before they finish?And the end is still uncertain on final passage whether enough of the core compromisers can actually get support for the final bill.