After a couple of days of wrangling to get the new immigration bill through the Senate, in the end the Senators couldn’t agree on whether or not to extend debate and Senator Reid withdrew the bill, saying he hopes to revisit it this year.

Supporters of the bill could only muster 45 votes to limit debate and move the bill to a final vote, while 50 votes, made up of mostly Republicans, voted to extend debate so they could try to get more amendments into the bill.

All but seven Republicans voted against ending debate, with many arguing they needed more time to make the bill tougher with tighter border security measures and a more arduous legalization process for unlawful immigrants. Thirty-eight Republicans and Sen. Bernard Sanders, a Vermont independent, opposed the procedural tactic.

All but 11 Democrats supported the move, but they, too, were holding their noses at provisions of the bill. Many of them argued it makes second-class citizens of a new crop of temporary workers and rips apart families by prioritizing employability over blood ties in future immigration.

Thirty-seven Democrats and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, voted to advance the measure.

If this measure doesn’t come up again this session of Congress, we have lost our best chance at beginning to solve our immigration problem, but of course those far-right and far-left members of both parties don’t see it that way. They’d rather gripe about it than actually put forth the effort to support a bill that can be a foundation for a better overall bill later on.