Last week's health care summit likely decided the fate of Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) for this year. It is still too soon to tell what is going to happen, but the decisions made following that conference will determine whether CIR is brought up for a vote.

Under one possibility, if the Republicans are willing to negotiate in good faith on a compromise health care bill, then there will be an opening that will allow time for consideration of CIR while everyone is negotiating.

Under a second possibility, the Democrats decide to try to pass the health care bill through a process known as "reconciliation." This only requires a simple majority vote. If this happens, health care could be off the table very quickly. This, too, could leave sufficient time for consideration of CIR.

A third possibility is that the Democrats try to pass health care through reconciliation and fail. This would be the end of the health care bill for this session of Congress and likely would leave enough time for CIR.

Finally, a fourth possibility is that the Democrats successfully pass the health care bill through reconciliation, but the Republicans retaliate by shutting down the business of the Senate for the rest of the session, or at least a good part of it (as they have threatened to do).

Of these possibilities, the first is the least likely. It is highly likely that the Democrats are going to try to pass the health care bill through the reconciliation process. What the Republicans will do in response is anyone's guess.

The Senate runs on the concept of unanimous consent. Senate rules require that legislation be read in full before being voted upon. Almost always, this rule is waived "by unanimous consent" of all members. If even one member objects, then the entire text of the legislation must be read. The health care bill is about 2,700 pages long.

Back in December, when the Democrats overcame a Republican filibuster and proceeded to pass the Senate version of the health care bill, Republican refusal to give unanimous consent added about two and a half weeks to the time needed to pass the bill.

The Republicans are threatening to do this to all legislation if the Democrats pass health care through reconciliation. This is a very dangerous game to play. Back in 1995, Bill Clinton was a very unpopular President. The Republicans in Congress were riding a wave of popularity. The two sides got into a dispute over the budget and the government was shut down for a few days due to lack of funding. In the end, the Republicans were blamed and Clinton's popularity rose considerably. The Republicans lost seats in the 1996 election.

The Republicans have to be careful about shutting down the Senate. If they do this in a way that appears irresponsible to the voters, they will suffer in November. For this reason, we believe that the threat is not that serious. This does not mean that they won't extract a penalty from the Democrats in other ways, however.

As for the possibility of bipartisanship on CIR, a moderate Republican, Senator Lamar Alexander, had the following to say during the health care summit:

"When I go down on the floor, and I've been there a lot on this issue, some of my Democratic friends will say, "Well, Lamar, where's the Republican comprehensive bill?" And I say back, "Well, if you're waiting for Mitch McConnell to roll in a wheelbarrow in here with a 2,700-page Republican comprehensive bill, it's not going to happen," because we've come to the conclusion that we don't do comprehensive well.

We've watched the comprehensive economy-wide cap in trade. We've watched the comprehensive immigration bill. We had the best senators we've got working on that in a bipartisan way. We've watched the comprehensive health care bill. And they fall of their own weight."

This comment seems to suggest that, at least for Senator Alexander, a comprehensive immigration bill is not the way to go and that separate bills dealing with individual subjects would be better. The problem with that approach is that on the House side, the Democrat's Congressional Hispanic Caucus refuses to allow a vote on any immigration bill that is not a comprehensive approach with an amnesty component.

Time will tell whether the Democrats have the will and the muscle to try to introduce and pass a Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill this session.