Tuesday morning, Hastert met with the committee chairmen who would convene the various panels. They agreed to the plan unanimously, despite any embarrassment or disappointment it might cause the White House.
"This is not the way [the White House] wanted things to go," said Laura Reiff, co-chair of the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, a coalition of business groups backing the Bush approach on immigration.
Some Bush allies in the debate said the hearings could propel efforts to reach agreement on a bill.
"There are a lot of voters who want [immigration problems] solved, who want Congress to govern," said Tamar Jacoby, an expert on immigration issues at the pro-business Manhattan Institute think tank who has been working with White House strategists. "After we spend two months talking about this ... it's going to deepen people's hunger for a solution."
But other Bush allies are resigned to a stalemate that prevents any bill from being sent to him.
"We got too close to the election for any sort of rational conversation" on an overhaul of immigration policy, said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, an economically conservative advocacy group.
Norquist said the White House fell short in efforts to effectively enlist to its side the business community, which backs the guest worker program called for in the Senate bill.
Indeed, in the midst of the bickering on Capitol Hill in recent weeks, organizers quietly shut down a White House-backed coalition called Americans for Border and Economic Security. The group had been created to raise millions of dollars from businesses that rely on immigrant labor to help lobby for the Bush position.
"Unfortunately, business just never came to the table," said a GOP strategist who worked with the White House on the effort and requested anonymity when discussing it because of the topic's political sensitivity.
"They didn't understand that if they didn't shape the debate, if they didn't make their arguments, the thing would be hijacked politically," the strategist said. "Well, now it's fully hijacked."
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Times staff writer Nicole Gaouette contributed to this report.
