Our country could use more political leaders like Alan K. Simpson, the former Wyoming U.S. senator who died March 14 at the age of 93.
I got to know Simpson in 1981, during his first term as a senator. I had recently begun working as a special assistant to Attorney General William French Smith at the start of President Ronald Reagan’s administration. Immigration was in crisis in the aftermath of the 1980 Mariel boatlift that brought more than 100,000 migrants from Cuba, as well as chronic undocumented migration at the southern border. In addition, more than 200,000 refugees were admitted to the U.S. in 1980, primarily from Vietnam and Cambodia, following the end of the Vietnam War. Facing these pressing issues, Reagan asked Smith to lead the administration’s response, and the attorney general asked me to work on it.
Simpson was chair of the immigration subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He was a folksy, plain-spoken, sharp-humored lawyer and son of a former Wyoming senator and governor. I was also personally drawn to him as my brother Scott had attended the University of Wyoming where he met his wife, Ruth.
Over the next two years, we worked with Simpson and his staff, as well as his counterpart on the House side, Rep. Romano Mazzoli, a Democrat from Kentucky, to find solutions for our immigration and refugee situation. Simpson and Mazzoli were something of an odd couple: Simpson, a Republican, was tall and slender, gregarious, and even a little corny, whereas Mazzoli, a Democrat, was short and compact, quieter and reserved. But both were known to share an interest in immigration. Mazzoli’s father had emigrated from Italy. Simpson, as a Boy Scout in the 1940s, had met Scouts from Japanese American families who were interned at a camp in Wyoming during World War II. (One of the Scouts Simpson met was 12-year-old Norman Mineta, who would later become a Democratic congressman and secretary of transportation under President George W. Bush.)
Simpson and Mazzoli’s efforts eventually led to the Immigration Control and Reform Act, signed into law by Reagan in 1986. The legislative journey was long and uncertain, with the contested bill often viewed as dead. Its ultimate passage owes a lot to the tenacity of Simpson and Mazzoli. We also had a president in Reagan who hailed from a border state, knew both the challenges and the benefits of immigration, and had a track record of working across party lines.
The legislation included the first-ever prohibition on hiring workers without documentation, more border enforcement, expanded visas for needed temporary workers and a path to legal status for longtime undocumented residents. This was the last time there was comprehensive immigration reform in our country. Clearly, the 1986 law did not solve our country’s immigration issues for all time. Border enforcement remained too weak, even as the forces propelling migration from Central and South America were exploding. And the need for immigrants in our workforce has never been greater. Nonetheless, repeated efforts to again forge bipartisan solutions have failed in the years since.
Simpson left the Senate after three terms in 1997. In 2010, President Barack Obama appointed him and Erskine Bowles, a former chief of staff for President Bill Clinton, to lead a bipartisan commission on strategies to reduce the growing federal deficits and debt level. They came up with bipartisan recommendations for a combined $4 trillion in spending cuts and tax increases. Legislative efforts to implement some or all of the Simpson-Bowles recommendations have failed several times, facing critics on the left for entitlement spending cuts and critics on the right for tax increases. Federal debt was $13.5 trillion in 2010. It is now more than $36 trillion.
Simpson embodied the practical, can-do, bipartisan approach to government that used to be a hallmark of our politics. His passing reminds us of what is possible.
David Hiller is a former publisher of the Chicago Tribune.
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