Published January 26, 2024
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Friday pressed Congress to embrace a bipartisan Senate deal to pair border enforcement measures with Ukraine aid, but House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested the compromise on border and immigration policy could be “dead on arrival” in his chamber.
The Democratic president said in a statement late Friday that the policies proposed would “be the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we’ve ever had in our country.” He also pledged to use a new emergency authority to “shut down the border” as soon as he could sign it into law.
Biden’s embrace of the deal — and Republican resistance — could become an election-year shift on the politics of immigration. Yet the diminishing prospects for its passage in Congress may have far-reaching consequences for U.S. allies around the globe, especially Ukraine.
Senate Republicans had initially insisted that border policy changes be included in Biden’s $110 billion emergency request for funding for Ukraine, Israel, immigration enforcement and other national security needs. But the Senate deal faced collapse this week as it came under fire from Republicans, including Donald Trump, the likely presidential nominee, who eviscerated the deal as a political “gift” to Democrats.
Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, on Friday sent a letter to colleagues that aligns him with hardline conservatives determined to sink the compromise. The speaker said the legislation would have been “dead on arrival in the House” if leaked reports about it were true.
A core group of senators negotiating the deal were hoping to release text early next week, but conservatives already say the measures do not go far enough to limit immigration. The proposal would enact tougher standards on migrants seeking asylum as well as deny asylum applications at the border if daily migrant encounters grow to numbers that are unmanageable for authorities.
“Rather than accept accountability, President Biden is now trying to blame Congress for what HE himself intentionally created,” Johnson said in the letter.
The speaker’s message added to the headwinds facing the Senate deal, closing a week in which Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged to his colleagues that the legislation faced tough opposition from Trump that could force them to pursue Ukraine aid another way. He later clarified that he was still supportive of pairing border measures with Ukraine aid.
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SOURCE: www.wect.com
RELATED: Speaker Mike Johnson to Colleagues: Senate Immigration Deal ‘Dead on Arrival’ in House
FILE – House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., talks with reporters at the Capitol in Washington, Nov. 2, 2023. As Johnson tries to unite the slim House Republican majority, he’s fast running into the same hard-right factions and divisions that his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy was unable to tame. It’s disrupting the GOP agenda, shelving priorities and leaving gnawing questions about any leader’s ability to govern.(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
Published January 26, 2024
House Speaker Mike Johnson told his House colleagues in a letter on Friday morning that the Senate immigration and Ukraine funding deal is “dead on arrival” in the House if the Senate passes it.
The letter, sent to House Republicans on Friday morning and obtained by Breitbart News, makes clear that the Speaker will not consider the Senate plan as written under any circumstances.
“I wanted to provide a brief update regarding the supplemental and the border, since the Senate appears unable to reach any agreement,” Johnson wrote. “If rumors about the contents of the draft proposal are true, it would have been dead on arrival in the House anyway. Nine months have now passed since we sent our Secure the Border Act (HR 2) to the Senate. As we have explained repeatedly, that bill contains the core legislative reforms that are necessary to actually compel the Biden administration to resolve the border catastrophe. The bill’s provisions include transformative corrections, such as the ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy, the end of ‘Catch and Release,’ meaningful reforms to the existing broken asylum and parole systems, and continued construction of a wall at our southern border. Since the day I became Speaker, I have assured our Senate colleagues the House would not accept any counterproposal if it would not actually solve the problems that have been created by the administration’s subversive policies.”
Letter Final 1-26-24 by Breitbart News on Scribd
By every account from every negotiator and party involved, the Senate plan will not do these things—so what Johnson is saying in effect is that the Senate can pursue whatever it likes, but the House will not be considering it under any circumstances.
Johnson’s throwdown against the Senate plan is no surprise—he had posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, earlier this month that it was a nonstarter in the House. But Washington insiders had been trying to pressure him to back down since then, something he clearly is not going to do after this letter.
It comes as Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell cooled on the Senate negotiations after former President Donald Trump, the leading candidate for president this year and essentially the presumptive nominee, has called on Johnson to reject any deal that is not “perfect.” McConnell told Senators in a private meeting earlier this week that Trump’s position on this changes things, and that he does not want to do anything to undermine the man he said will be the “nominee” of the party for president.
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SOURCE: www.breitbart.com
RELATED: Senate GOP pleads with Trump not to kill Ukraine-border security deal
Published January 25, 2024
Senate Republicans who favor sending aid to Ukraine and cutting a deal with Democrats to secure the U.S.-Mexico border are hoping that former President Trump’s Senate allies can intervene with the presidential front-runner to save a carefully negotiated package of military aid and border security reforms from going down in flames.
Senate Republican Policy Committee Chair Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) this week asked colleagues who have endorsed Trump to intercede with the Republican presidential front-runner and ask that he hold off on criticizing the emerging deal until lawmakers have a chance to review its details.
Ernst and other Republicans are worried that Trump will throttle legislation to help Ukraine and improve border security before the text of the deal is even released.
One Republican senator who attended a Senate GOP discussion on the bill said Ernst asked “those of you who have endorsed Trump, please ask Trump: Don’t cut off its head before we’ve even seen it.”
The lawmaker said Trump’s opposition to a border security deal is “damaging.”
A second GOP senator confirmed Ernst’s plea to colleagues to ask Trump to hold his fire.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told Senate Republican colleagues Wednesday afternoon that the politics of passing border security reforms attached to Ukraine funding is turning out to be a lot tougher than he and other GOP lawmakers initially expected.
McConnell acknowledged that Trump’s expected opposition to any border security deal could prove too big an obstacle to overcome, according to GOP senators in the meeting.
“I think he was saying out loud what a lot of people are thinking on this. When [the negotiations] started in October, we were not in a presidential election year. This was a totally different moment on it. Now we are in the heat of a primary in a presidential election year. It’s a huge campaign issue and it kind of gets sucked into all of this conversation” about a Ukraine funding and border security package, said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), the lead Republican negotiator on the border reforms.
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SOURCE: www.thehill.com
