Tester Doubts Immigration Reform Will Happen This Year

Montana Sen. Jon Tester appeared on MSNBC Thursday to speak primarily about the financial reform bill being debated in Congress. Tester, who sits on the Banking Committee, questioned Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein earlier this during Senate hearings and told Chuck Todd that one of the encouraging things that came out of the hearings was that the company took some responsibility for the financial meltdown of 2008.

But what also made headlines Thursday – especially with Arizona’s recently passed, and controversial, law – was Tester’s response to Todd’s question regarding immigration reform. An excerpt from the interview:

Todd: Is it realistic that immigration reform can actually … be taken up and passed in an election year, this year?

Tester: I’ll tell you straight up Chuck, I doubt it. We’ve got a lot of stuff on the table to do. This Wall Street reform bill is going to take some time. If we end up taking up energy policy or a potential climate change policy, you know better than anyone that’s going to take a huge amount of time. We still have some appropriations bills to take up, some budget bills to take up, the list goes on and on and on.

Here’s the video:

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