After some initial pleasantries, Utah lawmakers wasted no time flinging verbal tomatoes at their U.S. counterparts Tuesday.

The first question for both Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett had to do with immigration, something in which Utah is engulfed this session with at least a dozen bills.

Immigration

It was asked why the U.S. Congress has failed again and again to address a problem that's supposed to be in its stewardship. Hatch said the federal government has spent billions bolstering border security, and once that is done, the issue of what do to with the roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants already here comes next.

"We're likely to have that as a issue once the election is over," he said.

He would like to see a massive increase of H1-B worker visas to keep high-tech workers in the country to help grow the economy.

He said 70 percent of those in the country don't want to be citizens, instead coming for work and sending the money back to their country of origin. And while they should be treated in a "humane, decent way," he said, "If they don't abide by our laws, we can't abide by that."

Bennett also spoke of the billions being spent on border security, but segued into the plight of employers who can't find people who want to work if not illegal immigrants.

All that money is beginning to slow the flow of immigrants northward.

He said farmers have told him, "I'm going to sell my farm in Utah and buy land in Mexico." The idea is, if the labor can't come to them, they'll go to the labor.

Homeland Security

Hatch railed on Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives for holding up a bill that would update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. While it passed in the Senate and would likely pass in the House, it has been hung up in committee because it provides immunity for telecoms that participate in government surveillance. He said that and other FISA changes are required to bring surveillance into the 21st century.

Health Care

Bennett said he's working with Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, on a bipartisan effort to provide a federal framework on health-care reform. While he applauded Utah's work to do it on a state level, he said it's a federal problem that needs to be solved on a federal level.

"You cannot solve a problem you did not create," he told Utah lawmakers.

He said, so far, there are six Republicans and six Democrats signed on to the effort and he hopes to have more soon. While he harbors no illusion that it would pass this year, he hopes to present the new president with the information he and his colleagues have collected.

He said the Republicans are willing to concede that everyone in the country should have health care and the Democrats in his group have given up the insistence for the single-payer system associated with socialism.

Federal Debt

Hatch was asked to comment on the massive federal debt and its impact on the children who will be saddled with paying it off.

He said the debt "was of great concern to us all" and the best way to help the country would be to make permanent the Bush tax cuts from 2001 and 2002.

He launched into the issue of personal debt that he said then rolls into government largesse.

"I despair for our country, because people are so used to so much," he said. "Once people know they can get largesse from the federal government, they always fail. Right now, our people think there aren't any limits to anything."

He added that the federal efforts to stave off a recession probably won't amount to much.

"Frankly, I don't have a lot of confidence in that particular stimulus bill," he said.