Senate negotiators have been composing a border proposal to address the migrant influx and national security concerns with current immigration policies. Despite efforts to enact a bipartisan plan, the bill has sparked fury from many conservatives, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who vowed to oppose the “suicidally stupid” bill on “The Ingraham Angle” Monday.
NEWT GINGRICH: I’ve been an active Republican my whole life. Every once in a while, part of the party becomes suicidally stupid. That bill is suicidally stupid. It makes no sense. I will oppose it every way I can, and I hope that every Republican activist in the country will oppose it. It is a total sellout, and it’s just dumb. It’s like having an absolute winning hand and saying, please, can I just lay these down and lose the game anyway? All they gotta do is say we want to stop everything now. When I first heard that 5,000 people a day get to come in and that doesn’t count as illegal immigration? I thought – I don’t know what they’re drinking, but it’s not good.
Talks have been ongoing for months as lawmakers have tried to find a deal over a fix to the southern border as part of talks for supplemental spending that includes aid to Ukraine and Israel.
The Biden administration is seeking over $100 billion in funding, including $14 billion for the border. But Republicans have demanded limits on migrant releases into the interior, including the use of parole, and negotiators have been attempting to find a compromise.
The proposal still being hammered out by Senate negotiators would include a Title 42-type authority that would only be mandated if numbers at the southern border exceeded 5,000 migrant encounters a day — part of a package already drawing fierce criticism from some conservatives in the chamber, with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, branding it a “stinking pile of crap.”