Frist Has An Alternative Ready

March 15, 2006

With Judiciary Committee members struggling to craft compromises on a host of controversial provisions in their immigration reform package, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has prepared an alternate bill of his own and will bring it to the floor for a two-week full Senate markup following the St. Patrick’s Day recess if the committee cannot complete its bill before week’s end, Senate GOP aides said Tuesday.

An aide to Frist explained Tuesday that while Frist remains hopeful the committee can work out its differences on hot-button issues such as guest worker visas before the end of the week — and has “kidnapped [the Mike Mansfield room in the Capitol Building] for them to be able to finish” the markup during Thursday’s planned budget vote-a-rama — Frist has drafted a “backup [bill] in case there is some sort of inability to finish in Judiciary.”

A committee aide, while unable to comment specifically on the possibility of Frist moving a separate bill to the floor, remained optimistic that option would not be necessary. “Let us see what we can accomplish in the next two days,” the aide said, adding that “Frist’s office [has been] very deferential to the chairman and the committee” throughout the markup process.

Although the committee has approved a number of amendments to the bill during two days of markup hearings, a GOP aide close to the committee said that as of Tuesday afternoon no roll call votes had been taken, and all the amendments that were approved by voice vote were relatively noncontroversial. The aide also warned that when members take up more thorny issues such as the guest worker provision today and Thursday, things would likely become much more difficult.

Despite several weeks of negotiations, Republicans are “still eating their own” on the immigration bill, the aide said, particularly on the question of whether illegal workers must first return to their home countries before being given a visa. Chairman Arlen Specter’s (R-Pa.) bill did not include such a provision, which is vehemently opposed by business interests but backed by anti-immigration groups in the GOP’s conservative voter base.

Although details of Frist’s bill were not available, the aide said the language was drafted in consultation with committee members and will have an emphasis on border enforcement, as well as enforcement of employment and other immigration rules that apply to the “interior” of the country.

“Regardless, we see this as the full Senate marking up the border security bill, and looking to mark up illegal immigration issues, in that two-week period” between the St. Patrick’s Day and Easter recesses, the aide said, quipping, “After all, if there are 100 Members, there are 101 ideas about how to solve the illegal immigration problem.”

source: Roll Call, “the Ides of March”