- Republicans in the House said they will not vote for the Senate border package
- At least 22 GOP lawmakers in the Senate were also expected to vote against the sprawling deal
- President Joe Biden says he supports the deal, which also includes aid to Israel, Taiwan and Ukraine, and blamed Trump for the disaster
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is now facing calls to resign and the GOP is in disarray after the House leadership and multiple senators vowed to never vote for the $118 billion border package.
The farcical development came less than an hour after President Joe Biden blamed Donald Trump for leading the bid to tank the law to help improve his chances in the 2024 election.
The bill – including $20 billion for border measures – would mandate the border be shut if there are 5,000 encounters over the course of a week or 8,500 migrants encountered in a single day.
But many Republicans didn’t think it went far enough and are demanding the immediate reinstatement of pandemic-era Title 42, Remain in Mexico policies and border wall construction.
House Speaker Mike Johnson immediately deemed it ‘dead on arrival’ and at least 22 Republicans in the Senate were expected to vote against the massive bill.
‘It’s been made pretty clear to us by the speaker will not become law,’ McConnell said Tuesday. ‘It looks to me, and most of our members, is that we have no real chance here to make a law.’
McConnell is also facing multiple calls to resign, including from Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, as Republicans turned their fury onto the 81-year-old for insisting border policy changes be included in the funding package for Ukraine and Israel.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had said that he plans to bring the first procedural vote to the floor on Wednesday and has the backing of President Biden and most Democrats.
President Joe Biden delivered a blistering speech at the White House Tuesday where he accused congressional Republicans of ‘caving’ to Donald Trump and urged them to ‘show some spine’ by backing a border security deal.
‘Frankly it looks like they’re caving,’ Biden said, while telling GOP lawmakers to ‘show some spine’ and asked them to ‘reconsider blowing this up.’
He accused Trump, his most likely 2024 rival, of spending his time pressing Republicans to oppose the deal.
Trump insisted in a flurry of posts to his Truth Social account that only a ‘fool or a radical left Democrat’ would actually vote for the ‘horrendous’ border package.
Three chief negotiators for the border security package, Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.), Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), unveiled the text of the sprawling deal on Sunday.
The $118 billion deal, backed by the White House, includes $14 billion in aid to Israel, $60 billion to Ukraine and also $20 billion for securing the southern border amid a massive increase in illegal migration. It also includes billions for critical partnerships in the Indo-Pacific, including Taiwan.
But since the text became public, Republicans expressed outrage at the legislation’s content and have called for new GOP leadership.
Top negotiator Lankford went after his GOP colleagues who are furious with the deal, saying on Fox & Friends Monday that they’re nitpicking ‘crazy details’ and just want to ‘attack’ the proposal – which he says closes the border down.
He specifically explained that crossers have exceeded 5,000 almost every single day over the past four months and called Republican criticism of the provision ‘ridiculous’ because the bill ‘completely closes the border down’ and ‘deports everyone.’
But Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, blasted the deal, calling it a ‘crap-sandwich of a border bill,’ and said ‘a single weekend’ isn’t long enough to fully review the 370-page law.
‘He needs three weeks to be able to read it, but he’s already opposed to it,’ Lankford fired back. ‘So again, people have to be able to read it and go through it themselves. Don’t just go off of Facebook post somewhere on what the bill says,’ Lankford said.
Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Sen. Steve Daines was the first among the upper chamber’s leadership to oppose the bill.
He has since been joined by other leadership Republican Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Sen. Jone Thune of North Dakota is still mulling it over.
Fired up Sen. Lankford also told reporters Monday that some lawmakers ‘point blank’ told him that since its a presidential election year, ‘don’t do anything that helps Biden,’ including by passing the border deal.
His statement was a shot at Trump for trying to step in and tank the deal.
But House Republican leadership made it clear over the weekend that the package doesn’t have backing in the lower chamber.
‘Any Republican voting for this Senate America last open border amnesty bill must be paid off by foreign interests and is acting as a foreign agent,’ Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene posted to X, formerly Twitter. ‘What an embarrassment! Shame on them!!’
Former Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry (R-Pa.) called the deal a ‘dumpster fire.’
‘I’ve seen enough,’ Speaker Johnson (R-La.) wrote on X. ‘This bill is even worse than we expected, and won’t come close to ending the border catastrophe the President has created.’
‘As the lead Democrat negotiator proclaimed: Under this legislation, ‘the border never closes,’ Johnson added. ‘If this bill reaches the House, it will be dead on arrival.’
Meanwhile, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) wrote, ‘Let me be clear: The Senate Border Bill will NOT receive a vote in the House.’
Additionally, several progressives are also expected to oppose the plan – like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who said Sunday that he is against the package due to the funding for Israel.
And pro-immigration and Hispanic lawmakers are taking aim at overhauls made to the immigration policy.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) called the bill a ‘new version of Trump-era policies that will cause more chaos at the border.’
The White House intervened with border negotiations in the Senate, with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas going to Capitol Hill for discussions despite the House launching an impeachment inquiry against him at the same time.
In December, the U.S. saw the highest number of migrants arrested at the U.S. border with Mexico as more than 302,000 were apprehended by Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
When broken down by day, approximately 10,000 migrants crossed every day from Mexico into the U.S. in December, which is 5,000 more than the cutoff the new bill would establish.
