138th Year... and still on the job!	Thursday May 04, 2006

An amendment requiring the Pentagon to set a firm schedule for destroying the mustard weapons at the Pueblo Chemical Depot should be approved by the Senate this week, Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., said Wednesday.

Salazar and Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., have jointly sponsored the amendment, which is expected to be added to the $106 billion defense supplemental budget bill that the Senate is finishing.

While other amendments have been discarded in recent days to hold down the final cost of the spending bill, Salazar said the bipartisan support for the chemical weapons amendment meant it would be included.

Salazar was not as confident about the prospects for Congress approving a comprehensive immigration bill this year. In a telephone press conference Wednesday, he predicted the Senate would go back to work on the legislation in the next few weeks, but said there was only a "50-50 chance" that senators could reach a compromise with House Republicans.

A core group of House GOP lawmakers have said they will not approve any legislation that gives illegal workers any way to legalize their residency, calling that "amnesty."

On the other hand, Salazar said the Senate was unlikely to adopt legislation that focused only on tougher border controls and deporting illegal workers, as many House Republicans want.

Salazar said the Senate bill, which included doubling the number of Border Patrol agents and adding 1,000 extra federal investigators, would also give the 11 million undocumented workers in this country some path to pay back taxes and legalize their residency.

"We're not going to ignore the elephant in the room, which are the 11 million people who are working in this country illegally," he said.

On other issues, Salazar said he hoped the Senate would keep an amendment he co-sponsored in the defense budget bill that would provide emergency disaster relief for drought damaged regions, such as the Eastern Plains.

"I believe that many areas of Southeastern Colorado might qualify for emergency disaster relief from the drought conditions," he said. "The water supply is only about 50 percent of what it was a year ago, so I think the region is facing some tough times ahead."