Not only are they planning to have just one hearing (which is OK with the Same-Sex-Senators), Mike Lee says the bill will be over 1,000 pages long. So they are protesting the fact that only one hearing is scheduled in order to rush this bill through and get it passed.
Levin is right, this is indeed democratic tyranny:
FOX NEWS – Republican senators complained Wednesday that plans to hold just one hearing on a yet-to-be-unveiled immigration overhaul are “unacceptable” — as they continued to press for more details on how much the legislation could cost taxpayers.
Fox News has learned the proposed bill could be unveiled as early as Thursday. In anticipation of the release, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., announced his committee will hold a hearing on the legislation April 17.
Though Leahy noted this hearing would be the committee’s fourth on immigration this year, Republican senators complained it would only be the first — and possibly last — on this specific bill.
“A single hearing scheduled so quickly to discuss legislative language that is not yet even available is completely inadequate for senators or the American people to get answers to the many questions a bill of this magnitude will inevitably raise,” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said in a statement. “We could not possibly have a meaningful hearing with a substantive discussion of what will surely be over 1,000 pages of provisions we haven’t even yet seen.”
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., called the hearing schedule “unacceptable.”
“We need a committee hearing on every component of reform, including the extraordinary potential costs to taxpayers, the impact on wages and job prospects for the unemployed, and the administration’s continued refusal to enforce the laws previously enacted by Congress,” he said. “Failure to commit to this kind of open process is tantamount to an admission that the bill is not workable and will not stand up to public scrutiny.”
Sessions and Lee have been among the most skeptical Republican lawmakers when it comes to ongoing efforts to draft an immigration overhaul.
Those talks have largely been confined to the so-called “Gang of Eight,” which includes four Democrats and four Republicans. A key member of that group is Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who has along with Sessions and others urged Senate Democrats not to rush the process.
Separately, Sessions and two other Republican senators on Wednesday sent a letter to the Republican members of the “Gang of Eight” asking for specific details on the projected cost of the immigration bill.
Though a recent agreement between big labor and big business on the issue of temporary worker cards was highly touted, the senators have tried to draw attention to what is arguably the bill’s most controversial component — the path to citizenship for up to 11 million illegal immigrants.
“A primary concern related to a large-scale legalization of illegal immigrants is the long-term cost for taxpayers,” the lawmakers said in the letter Wednesday. The letter was signed by Sessions, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan.