House GOP pins Senate immigration bill on Democrats

Posted by Frank James at 6:38 pm CDT

We reporters who covered the Senate immigration debate this spring clearly remember it as a bipartisan effort. Republican senators Arlen Specter, John McCain, Chuck Hagel, Mel Martinez and Sam Brownback and others in their party worked mightily with Democrats to negotiate a deal and all celebrated together when they succeeded.

In a bit of revisionist history, however, House Republicans have taken to calling the Senate bill the Kennedy bill or, in a variation, the Reid-Kennedy bill after Democratic senators Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate’s highest-ranking Democrat

At a press conference today in the crammed House press gallery House Republican leaders did everything they could to wrap the Senate immigration bill, albatross-like, around Democratic necks.

I counted 18 times where they either called the Senate bill the Kennedy bill or the Reid-Kennedy bill. Some examples:

“We believe that the Kennedy bill does not go far enough to address the illegal immigration or secure our borders. There are significant concerns that the Reid-Kennedy bill will do the following,” said Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) who then ticked off some of the problems House Republicans have with the legislation.

“Americans should know what's in the Reid-Kennedy bill,” said Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio,) the House Majority Leader at another point.

“So as we go back to our districts and talk to our constituents from all over the country, we're hearing that people don't feel good about the Reid-Kennedy bill,” said Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio,) chairman of the House Republican Conference.

A reporter questioned the Republicans about this fairly obvious attempt to relabel what was bipartisan Senate legislation into a Democratic bill.

REPORTER: Mr. Leader, isn't it a little disingenuous on behalf of Republicans to call this the Reid-Kennedy bill when the Senate’s controlled (by Republicans) and that there's a part of this, I guess, that some people might imply that you're trying to speak a code to certain constituents?

(In other words, the reporter seemed to be asking, wasn’t the use of Kennedy’s name meant to get the Republican base worked up so that it would work hard to keep House Republicans in the majority?)

Here’s how Boehner responded.

REP. BOEHNER: Two-thirds of the votes to pass this bill in the Senate came from Senate Democrats and in this case led by the minority leader and the ranking -- he's not the ranking member on Judiciary (committee)-- but Senator Kennedy's input. And so referring to this as the Reid- Kennedy bill, I think, is appropriate.

Boehner is correct that most of the votes came to pass the Senate legislation came from Senate Democrats. But it’s inaccurate to call the bill the Reid-Kennedy bill since there are major provisions in the Senate legislation that were Republican ideas.

For instance, one of the Senate bill’s most curious features was a Republican idea, the so-called “touchback” provision. That would require illegal immigrants in the U.S. less than five years but more than two to leave their homes and visit a location along the border where they would then apply for re-entry to the U.S. and then immediately be allowed to re-enter the U.S.

But in Washington, there is apparently nothing that can’t be spun or rebranded, especially when the people being marketed to aren’t reporters who follow the legislative process day by day but voters living their lives far away from Washington.

So expect to hear a lot more about the Kennedy or Kennedy-Reid immigration bill. Realize, however, that what you’re seeing is a classic example of Washington spin.

(Photo by Pete Souza of the Chicago Tribune.)