Sali expects to introduce immigration bill

Rep. Bill Sali plans to introduce immigration reform legislation within the next couple of weeks.

Sali announced his plans at a meeting of BizNet, a business leads and networking group, last week. The bill would combine border security, increased immigration law enforcement and a temporary worker program with controls to prevent foreign workers from flooding the market and displacing American workers.
The key to immigration reform is to combine groups that want to see the borders protected and groups that are concerned with the effects on the economy – particularly the agriculture, construction and hospitality industries – that a loss of immigrant workers would create, he said.
Sali said he tends to fall into the first camp, but he sees the effects of a lack of immigrant workers on agriculture. Last year, $1.5 billion worth of crops were lost because farmers couldn’t find workers to harvest them. This year, that figure is expected to rise to $3.5 billion, he said.
When asked what would happen to children of illegal immigrants who are born in the U.S. under his plan, Sali admitted he had no solution. “That’s getting into the world peace level of problem solving,” he said.

Winning America back
Immigration reform could become an issue that helps the Republicans find their way back, since the party has lost its way in the last few years, he said.
“I think the Republican Party has lost track. We were in the majority and we spent money like drunken sailors and ran into ethical problems.” Sali tried to paint ethics as a bipartisan issue by bringing up Rep. William Jefferson, but acknowledged that “Republicans have a very deep-seated problem.”
People have begun to think Republicans don’t believe their own message any more, he said – not on values and not on fiscal responsibility. “People believe Democrats will spend less than the Republicans,” he said. “That’s almost never been the case.”
Republicans need to work hard to win America back, Sali said. “I’ve likened it to the cheating spouse. You don’t just wake up in the morning and say I’m sorry. We have an obligation to win back the American people.”
Part of the problem is that Republicans haven’t been offering up Republican solutions to problems facing America, like immigration and health care. It’s not enough to say that the proposed expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program was horrible or that “Hillarycare” is bad, he said. “There are other models you can move to,” he said. “Where is the Republican proposal? … It won’t be enough to say, ‘The Democrats are bad, so vote for us.’”

Sen. Larry Craig
Embattled Sen. Larry Craig can’t be recalled, so at least until the election, “He’s a U.S. senator as long as he wants to be a U.S. senator,” Sali said. “As long as he’s in office, the best thing I can do for the people of Idaho is making sure he’s effective.” Craig can still be effective, Sali said – for one thing, he was able to keep his earmarks for state projects.
Sali expressed no qualms about standing by Craig.
“He has steadfastly denied that he did anything wrong. There are some weird things that happened there. [If he was gay all this time] wouldn’t you expect there’s a long line of people saying, ‘I was one of them’? Are you really going to believe the Idaho Statesman?”

Leave business alone!
“I don’t like the government messing around in business,” Sali said.
Whether it’s regulations and oversight, price supports, loan programs or programs to encourage science and technology, Sali often finds something not to like.
Legislation proposed in the wake of the subprime crisis would have gone too far, Sali said. It would have regulated not just subprime mortgages, but all mortgages.
“(It) was going to create liability like we’ve never seen,” he said.
He hopes the bill is changed in the Senate to narrow the focus. Some unregulated areas of the market need some oversight, he said. “Other than that, I want to leave the market alone.”
When Congress was debating the Farm Bill, he talked to farmers and told them he understood that their business model right now requires that they get price supports and subsidies; otherwise, they won’t have the financial security to allow them to get financing. But he told them he wanted them to wean themselves from the subsidy system. “How many of you have the government guaranteeing you anything?” he asked the crowd at BizNet.
Sali ultimately voted against the Farm Bill because of riders that would have increased food stamps and taxed manufacturing, he said.
Earlier this year, Sali voted against a bill that would have created a Small Business Administration lending program for small rural businesses. Sali said he also won’t support new lending programs for veterans or women. At the end of the day, the SBA has to make loans to businesses that are going to make it, he said. If there aren’t enough viable rural, woman-owned or veteran-owned businesses out there to use up the funding, the programs would just tie up money that could be used elsewhere, he said.
Sali has also voted against a number of science and technology stimulus bills, including the Technology Innovation and Manufacturing Stimulation Act, which would appropriate funds for businesses and educational institutions developing promising, high-risk technologies, and the Sowing the Seeds through Science and Engineering Research Act, which would appropriate research funds to support graduate fellowships in science and engineering. He was one of about 20 representatives voting against both those bills.
He was also one of 16 voting against creating a national science and technology scholarship program, and he voted no on the 21st Century Competitiveness Act, a bill that would invest in research and development and train more math and science teachers, and that passed 367-57.
Sali said he voted against those programs because he doesn’t think they’re effective. He doesn’t believe funding these programs will create more student interest in math and science.
“There’s already 17 different agencies that were managing over 200 different programs to increase interest in teaching science, technology, math and engineering. Is it a bad idea to do that? No. But it’s not working now. We need to do things differently. It’s really easy to say if we give another program to these guys and another program to these guys it’ll get things done…. Just throwing money at the problem is not a real solution.”
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To contact the author of this story, send e-mail to:  lora.volkert@idahobusiness.net.