The Republicans voiced their opinions that the so-called “Gang of Eight” bill falls short of the goal of ending illegal immigration in the United States, especially given the Obama administration’s inability to enforce current immigration laws.

The bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday.

“We’re jumping the gun,” Rep. Louie Gohmert (R., Texas) told the committee.

The Republicans on the House committee stressed that the border must be secured and current laws enforced before meaningful reform can be considered. Many called the bill amnesty.

Rep. Steve King (R., Iowa) said the bill represented “the largest and most expensive amnesty act in the history of the United States.” He went on to say that IRCA, which was signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, was Reagan’s greatest political mistake.

IRCA granted amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants. Proponents of the Senate bill said IRCA was singularly focused on border security. The new bill goes further, they said.

However, Republicans are not convinced. The Senate bill would grant amnesty to over 11 million illegal immigrants without doing much to effectively enforce border security laws.

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R., Wis.) told the committee the Senate bill “could end legal immigration” by making it easier to become a legal immigrant illegally.

None of the witnesses testifying could specify a deadline by which time the border would be secure.

Additionally, there is concern over the broad authority granted to the Department of Homeland Security, a political appointee.

Witness Chris Crane, president of the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council, was concerned the bill gave the DHS secretary too much discretion.

Several Republicans expressed the belief that there was a political motivation behind the hastily passed immigration bill.

The bill could be beneficial to Democrats and the Obama administration, which has been pushing for reform.

“My constituents want a real remedy, not a political remedy,” said Rep. Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.).

“She had counsel, she had sufficient time with counsel and she clearly waived,” Issa told a group of reporters. “To be candid, my Democratic members were astounded, you didn’t hear any protest when I made it subject to recalling. There was nobody who argued with the point of order of Mr. Gowdy that in fact she had waived.”

Issa said Lerner will likely be called back to testify.

“Our staff, our lawyers are working with her lawyer, and we’ll take it up after the short recess … all four witnesses are subject to recall,” Issa said. “I think we expect that she’ll be back in front of the committee.”

Lerner testified at Wednesday’s hearing, “I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules and regulations and I have not provided false information to this or any other congressional committee.”

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.) immediately took issue with the committee’s decision to let Ms. Lerner leave without answering their questions.

“She just testified. She just waived her fifth amendment right to privilege,” Gowdy said. “That’s not the way it works. She waived her right to Fifth Amendment privilege by issuing an opening statement. She ought to stand here and answer our questions.”

“We’re often chastised for ‘are you going to bring somebody there just to ridicule them,’ of course not,” Issa said. “When someone says they’re going to take the fifth, you bring them, they take the fifth, you dismiss them.”

“She came, she chose to testify under oath, and then tried to assert,” Issa said. “Rather than disrupt the other three, we continued without her so there’d be time for attorneys to argue this out.”

Congress will be in recess all of next week and return Monday June 3.

“There’s a reason students don’t grade their own papers, there’s a reason defendants don’t sentence themselves, and there’s a reason the State Department doesn’t get to investigate themselves to determine whether or not it made errors in Benghazi,” Gowdy said. “That’s Congress’s job. So, yes, it would be a wild understatement for us to say we do not have confidence in the Accountability Review Board and its conclusions.”

Gowdy said there would be “persuasive” witnesses testifying about Benghazi May 8 and a “wonderful opportunity” to hear non-hearsay accounts about the attacks. President Obama claimed Tuesday that he had no knowledge of reports that these whistleblowers had been threatened or intimidated for divulging sensitive information to Congress about Benghazi.

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Gowdy said he was particularly interested in hearing from more eyewitnesses to supplement accounts in the Accountability Review Board (ARB) and testimony from public officials.

Despite the ARB relatively absolving the State Department of responsibility for the Benghazi attack, Gowdy noted he remains unconvinced that the report was unbiased given the State Department was in effect critiquing itself:

MARTHA MACCALLUM: I thought it was interesting when we got the Accountability Review Board to look at all this and there was definitely an effort to close the book on this thing after that. That you know, we’ve done our research, we know what happened. The Pentagon was not to blame was one of the outcomes of that report. There is no way they could have gotten any one there in time. We heard from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen also basically said the same thing. This is coming from very high up that there was no way they could have made it there. So this is a huge revelation if it is true, Congressman?

TREY GOWDY: Well, welcome to Washington. Here’s my question, Martha. How did they know they couldn’t have made it there? They had no way to know when it was going to end. They knew when the attack started but how in the world could they possibly have known when it was going to end while it was going on? Nobody would have for seen this lasting seven hours. So that is the middle tranche. Let me say with respect to the Accountability Review Board. Martha there’s a reason we don’t let students grade their own papers and we don’t let defendants sentence themselves or investigate themselves. People lack the objectivity to question themselves. So the fact that the State Department may have cleared the State Department doesn’t matter. I could care less. It is Congress’ job to provide the oversight. The other point that I think Speaker Boehner hopefully will make is this. We know Susan Rice was wrong. We know that she was demonstrably wrong. What I want to know is whether her intentional misleading of her fellow citizens actually hampered the investigation going forward? We know she contradicted the evidence. We know she contradicted the president of Libya. What I want to know, is did her misrepresentations affect our ability to investigate what happened in Benghazi in the hours and days thereafter? Because we know the crime scene wasn’t secured. We know the Bureau didn’t go for two weeks. What I want to know was it because Susan Rice directly contradicted the president of Libya with her Sunday morning talk show appearances, because there’s a difference between just being wrong and being intentionally misleading.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held the latest in several hearings to review executive agencies’ implementation of the recommendations by their inspectors general. This hearing focused on the Department of Defense and the Department Homeland Security.

The sequestration cuts loomed over the hearing, even though Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) noted at the outset that the hearing was not about the mandatory cuts that went into effect on March 1. Some congressmen sought to disparage the cuts while others looked to the agencies for better ways to manage the reductions.

Rep. John Mica (R., Fla.) zeroed in on the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). He questioned Homeland Security Under Secretary for Management Rafael Borras about the department’s sizable payrolls and asked why it is not shuffling resources around to compensate for the budget cuts. TSA has almost 66,000 employees and 10,000 administrators, he said.

“This is one of the most shameful things I’ve seen any agency do, and you are bloated beyond control,” Mica said.

“We never intended Homeland Security to bloat to this extent,” he said.

Rep. John Tierney (D., Mass.) noted that Congress should have anticipated the massive growth of the TSA, but also said Congress should assume some responsibility.

“Congress spends the dime,” he said.

Mica also highlighted wasteful spending in his opening statement. He named several programs, including a $141,000 Chinese research program that “has to be absolutely essential to the continuation of the Republic as we know it.”

The congressmen also questioned Borras over DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano’s exaggerated statements about the sequester. She claimed that lines at major airports were 150 to 200 percent longer than usual, a claim Borras himself threw into doubt when he said there have not been any major effects of the sequestration thus far.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.) questioned Borras about why Homeland Security released 10 “level one” offenders in preparation for the sequestration. Gowdy said it costs the department $122 per day to hold a level one offender, defined as an aggravated felon.

“Could you not find $12,000 somewhere else in the DHS budget other than releasing level one aggravated felons as part of your cost-saving measures?” Gowdy asked. Borras conceded, under pressure from Gowdy, that DHS had sufficient funds to pay for retaining these felons.

“Don’t act as if you didn’t have any choice but to release aggravated felons,” Gowdy said.

The Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) chief told another House committee at about the same time on Tuesday that he could have sought other ways to save money besides releasing over 2,000 detained illegal immigrants, 10 of whom were the level one offenders that Gowdy brought up. ICE is part of the Department of Homeland Security.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R. Ohio) criticized Homeland Security’s inadequate preparation for the sequester. The department waited about a year after the sequester became a possibility before starting to plan for it, and it still has not responded to an inquiry from Issa into how the committee and Congress can help the department better implement the budget cuts.

“It seems to me if you had 20 months to prepare for this, and the chairman asks you how we can help you better implement it, you should have something to email right away,” Jordan said.

Issa noted that the Department of Defense was the only agency to respond to his inquiry with specific suggestions.

The Department of Defense’s Joint Strike Fighter project also came under scrutiny in the hearing, especially from Democrats. Committee ranking member Elijah Cummings (Md.) expressed indignation that the project would cost more than one trillion dollars over ten years.

Department of Defense Comptroller Robert Hale testified that the fighter is needed to update the military’s aging airplane fleet. Issa encouraged Hale to change the way the military approaches such appropriations in the future.

Hale also said some of Congress’ actions hurt the department’s effectiveness and ability to cut money. Continuing Resolutions prevent money from being appropriated in the right amounts, and Congress has overridden some of the department’s proposed cuts to programs.

The Department of Homeland Security faced scrutiny late last year for bloated and wasteful spending.

“Neil, how many of your viewers consider repeat, recidivist DUI offenders to be low risk?” Gowdy asked host Neil Cavuto. “ICE does. But if you’re hit by one of them, you don’t consider them to be low-risk.”

Gowdy mockingly referred to sequestration as “draconian,” stating it only cut two cents on the dollar from the federal budget and decried ICE for putting politics before the safety of American citizens.

“I just do not want law enforcement or the criminal justice system playing the same political games we always play with other agencies and institutions of government,” he said. “I just would hope public safety would be immune from these kinds of political shenanigans but apparently it’s not.”