Posted on 07/28/2005 6:25:34 PM PDT by hsmomx3
HOENIX -- Gov. Janet Napolitano chided the Bush administration for refusing to send two top officials to hearings this week on immigration reform.
"It is discouraging when the Congress finally starts taking up immigration bills (Tuesday) and the administration doesn't have anybody there to testify," Napolitano said Wednesday.
The governor noted that both Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao were scheduled to testify at a meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee about the two major proposals awaiting legislative action. Both, however, cancelled their appearance.
Aides to both said their bosses would testify at some future date.
The Judiciary Committee hearings that started this week are on two competing plans.
One by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., creates 400,000 visas for unskilled work and allows those here illegally to apply for permanent status after paying a fine.
The other, by Sens. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and John Cornyn, R-Tex., calls for more border patrol agents. It provides for an unlimited number of work visas when U.S. firms cannot fill jobs with legal residents but requires illegal entrants to first go back to their home countries.
Kyl said through an aide Wednesday that the senator did not take the cancellation of testimony by the two Bush aides as a slap but only as a sign that the administration was not yet ready to weigh in on the two plans.
But Napolitano said that's not the only problem, noting that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said he did not believe Congress would take up the issue this year.
"And I say, how long do Arizonans have to wait?" the governor said. Napolitano said a bipartisan push is needed for action this year.
"Next year they'll say we can't do it because it's an election year," she said. "Then the year after they'll say there's something else that we have to do. And in the meantime, Arizonans and the border states are really paying the price for failed immigration policy."
Gubernatorial press aide Pati Urias said Napolitano likes elements of both plans and believes the state's congressional delegation should unite behind a common proposal.
Napolitano, in a wide-ranging press conference Wednesday, also brushed aside the comments from Republican leaders that if she wants to work with the GOP-controlled Legislature she needs to make good on her promise to sign a bill allowing corporations to divert some state income tax liability to organizations that give scholarships to private and parochial schools. She vetoed the measure, saying she wants it to expire in five years unless reauthorized; Senate President Ken Bennett said the deal was only for a review.
"We can either keep beating the dead horse of the past or we can say we're going to have to agree to disagree on what happened and move ahead," Napolitano said.
But Bennett said that won't happen until there finally is a signed law on tuition tax credits. He said if Napolitano insists on a sunset, other provisions of the bill must be changed to make it more acceptable to Republicans.
Napolitano also gave a conditional endorsement of sorts to a new initiative designed to protect up to 694,000 acres of state trust land from development.
The governor, noting the language had changed during her two-week foreign vacation, said she had not read the final version of the plan. But she said the initiative "probably captures what it needs to capture, that we can't keep doing business as usual where state trust land is concerned."
She's too much!
I don't even live in Arizona and I'm totally sick of this chick. I hope she's tossed out of office this next election.
I'm glad you clarified that because I was thinking I had been reading that she was against most immigration legislation. She must be a RAT. LOL That's their signature. :o)
ALL of our Politicians are too much, especially on Illegal Immigration.
From President Bush right on down the line. This is like the Pot calling the kettle black (AZ Gov calling the President a failure on Immigration).
The entire lot need to be removed from office and people who actually CARE about our sovereingty our our borders need to be put into power.
Either that or we had better start considering the possibility that our government is destructive of the needs of our country and look to changing it back to either a confederation or the Constitutional Republic it once was.
"And I say, how long do Arizonans have to wait?" the governor said.
Too long, if the question involves getting rid of you
I agree she is a joke. but this may be a good opportunity for Republicans to pressure her into enacting some tough laws that she has veteod in the past.
"From President Bush right on down the line. This is like the Pot calling the kettle black (AZ Gov calling the President a failure on Immigration)."
Birds of a feather........
You guys miss ol Ed Meccham yet?
Hillary must already be distributing her talking points for 2008.
So true, so painfully true.
Whoever explains why W has no problem taking the fight overseas but turns Chamberlain on the border needs a prize.
ping
Chick? Have ya seen her? Dude would be more appropriate.
You're being too kind!
"And I say, how long do Arizonans have to wait?" the governor said.
Wait for what, Janet, your term to end?
Ditto that!
Napolitano a "chick"? LOL
Well, I was trying to be nice, but I don't know why.
I've noticed that Democrats are really really big on having people forget about whatever they've done in the past. Maybe that's why the Republican symbol is an elephant and theirs is an ass.
No Texas politician gets to the top without big debts to the Tex-Mex & Agricultural communities, which means a blind eye to illegal immigration.
Period.
Do I get to choose the prize?
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