Hastert calls for forums on immigration bills
Summer hearings called delay tactic
WASHINGTON -- Speaker J. Dennis Hastert announced a plan yesterday for House committees to hold an unusual series of hearings on the Senate immigration bill this summer, a move that will leave little time for Congress to reach an agreement on a comprehensive overhaul of the nation's immigration laws before the November elections.
The decision delays until at least September the appointment of a House-Senate conference committee that will be charged with bridging the vast differences between the immigration bills passed by the House and the Senate.
It also will give House members a chance to tout their support for stronger border enforcement at forums around the country in the weeks before the mid term congressional elections.
Democrats denounced Hastert's decision as a back handed way of blocking a comprehensive immigration bill from becoming law.
``It looks like another effort to score political points by refusing to do what needs to be done," said Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, a New York Democrat. ``This Congress sure won't do anything that's in the best interest of Americans so far as I can tell."
The bill passed in the House focused exclusively on beefing up border security. The Senate, meanwhile, tacked on a ``guest worker" program for immigrants to work legally in the United States and would provide a path to citizenship for most of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the country.
President Bush has endorsed the general approach in the Senate bill and has made the immigration issue his biggest legislative priority of the year. But House conservatives have blasted the Senate bill as ``amnesty" for those who entered the country illegally; House leaders say they want to concentrate on securing the borders before considering how to help immigrants work legally in the country.
Hastert, an Illinois Republican, directed his committee chairmen to analyze different portions of the Senate bill in hearings in Washington and around the country in July and August, said Ron Bonjean , a Hastert spokesman.
At least seven House committees will hold additional hearings, and Hastert will not appoint a conference committee until September, Bonjean said.
The hearings aim to examine in detail the various provisions of the Senate bill, Bonjean said, to educate the public and House members about the issues at stake in the immigration debate.
``Election-year pressures are not going to force us to rush to pass an immigration bill," Bonjean said. ``We want to make sure it's done right."
Legislative hearings are rarely scheduled on bills that have already passed the House or Senate. Republican leaders are making clear that they are launching the hearings with preconceived notions about the Senate bill.
House Republicans have begun calling the bill the ``Kennedy-Senate" immigration bill. The label is meant to link liberal Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, with the bill he co authored, though it passed the Senate with Republican votes, including those of Senator John McCain of Arizona and the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee.
House majority leader John A. Boehner strongly suggested that the hearings will be forums for criticizing portions of the Senate bill, particularly the provisions that would allow undocumented immigrants a path toward citizenship.
``We want to have a very clear idea of what is in the Senate bill and what people think of some of the provisions in the Senate bill," said Boehner, an Ohio Republican. ``The American people want us to secure our borders. They want us to enforce our laws."
Representative Tom Tancredo, a Colorado Republican who leads a hard-line anti-immigration group of House members, celebrated the speaker's announcement as a ``savvy political move" that will kill the controversial provisions in the Senate bill.
``The nail was already put in the coffin of the Senate's amnesty plan," Tancredo said in a statement. ``These hearings probably lowered it into the grave."
Kennedy said the House doesn't need to hold hearings on a bill that was given multiple hearings in the Senate, as well as several weeks' worth of debate on the Senate floor.
The House has had its say with its border-enforcement-only bill, and leaders there need to work out differences with the Senate measure, he said.
``This is clearly a delay tactic by the House Republicans who have been dead set against comprehensive reform from the beginning," Kennedy said. ``We know what the problem is. We know how to fix it. The American people are demanding a new direction, so for the good of the country, let's act."
Steny H. Hoyer, House minority whip, said the hearings are a cover up for the fact that the GOP isn't unified on overhauling immigration . ``This is a device to put off the issue, so they don't have to highlight their divisions," said Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat.
Still, some Republicans who favor the Senate bill said the hearings could help make House members comfortable with the measure, given the depth of their opposition to any plan that would give undocumented immigrants a chance to achieve citizenship.
``I would hope this would move the process forward," said McCain, who worked closely with Kennedy in writing the Senate bill.
``The worst of all worlds would be for us not to do anything."
Rick Klein can be reached at rklein@globe.com. 