Just days after a bipartisan group of senators cobbled together a $118 billion deal for increased border security and aid for American allies, Republican lawmakers killed off the chances of President Joe Biden signing the legislation into law.
Biden spent Monday and Tuesday calling for Congress to pass the legislation, and the White House has given no indication the president is mulling any backup plans to address the border crisis or extend additional security aid to Ukraine and Israel.
Instead, Biden and White House officials have rolled out two specific lines of attack in hopes of moving Republican lawmakers on the subject: claim that Republicans and former President Donald Trump, not Democrats, are responsible for the situation at the border, and assert that refusing to back the bipartisan bill after demanding border reforms be coupled to further aid for Ukraine and Israel will cost the GOP in the 2024 elections.
“All indications are this bill won’t even move forward to the Senate floor. Why? A simple reason: Donald Trump. Because Donald Trump thinks it’s bad for him politically,” the president said during remarks delivered at the White House on Tuesday. “He’d rather weaponize this issue than actually solve it. So for the last 24 hours, he’s done nothing, I’m told, but reach out to Republicans in the House and the Senate and threaten them and try to intimidate them to vote against this proposal, and it looks like they’re caving.”
“Frankly, they owe it to the American people to show some spine and do what they know to be right,” he added. “If the bill fails, I want to be absolutely clear about something: The American people are going to know why it failed. I’ll be taking this issue to the country, and the voters are going to know that just at the moment we were going to secure the border and fund these other programs, Trump and the MAGA Republicans said no because they’re afraid of Donald Trump.”
Biden’s comments on Tuesday appear to make it clear that the president, like Trump, plans to campaign heavily on the issue now that the Senate deal is effectively dead in the water, something Democratic campaign operatives tell the Washington Examiner is a low-risk, high-reward strategy.
“President Biden is committed to fixing the situation at the southern border, something Republicans claim to care about deeply, and delivering aid to our allies and civilians caught up in the fighting. What we’re seeing now from Republicans is a scramble to save face after the president called their bluff,” one operative familiar with Biden’s campaign strategy claimed, referencing Biden’s recent veto threat of House Republicans’ stand-alone “Israel only” aid bill. “Voters can tell the difference between naked politicking and an earnest effort to rise to the moment and meet challenges facing our country, and it’s going to cost [Republicans] at the ballot box in November.”
A second Democratic campaign strategist told the Washington Examiner that Trump himself is “doing the president’s work for him” by openly discussing the politics surrounding the debate.
That strategist specifically referenced Trump’s recent posts on Truth Social, claiming that the border-Ukraine deal is a trap Biden and Democrats laid for Republicans ahead of November, making Democrats’ messaging all the easier.
“The ridiculous ‘Border’ Bill is nothing more than a highly sophisticated trap for Republicans to assume the blame on what the Radical Left Democrats have done to our Border, just in time for our most important EVER Election,” the former president wrote on Truth Social on Monday. “Don’t fall for it!!!”
The strategist responded, “They’re saying the quiet part out loud. This whole border push from Republicans, from Greg Abbott all the way up to Donald Trump, is about trying to make President Biden vulnerable before the election. If they want to make immigration a top border issue, we’ll be happy to remind voters that Republicans time and time again have voted against budget requests that would increase security at the border, hire new officials to assist with the processing of migrants, and stop fentanyl from flowing into the country.”
A third Democratic operative gave an even more cynical perspective on the debate, suggesting that politicizing it won’t turn off Trump’s “faithful” from voting for him but will cost Republicans precious seats in both the House and Senate.
“Let’s be honest. American voters do not think President Biden has properly addressed the surge in northern migration, and over the past few months, they’ve seen him cave to Republican demands on the subject out of both a political necessity to address the issue and efforts to protect innocent people from unjust wars overseas,” that person told the Washington Examiner. “But now, Republicans are bending over backwards to reject the reforms they themselves requested and are giving the president the upper hand. Either they sign on to this bill, which by the way was negotiated by Republican senators, and fix the problem, or the blame shifts back onto them with both congressional majorities on the line.”
Still, Biden, at least according to House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) office, is capable of taking independent, executive actions that could address some of the issues at the border, including instating a Title 42-like removal authority.
The White House routinely states that the border crisis can only be fixed through legislative action, and press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre maintained that same message during Tuesday’s press briefing, claiming that “it is unfortunate that politics is getting in the way.”
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“We have a bipartisan agreement that the Senate put forth, Republicans and Democrats came together. There’s actually a piece of legislation. The text came out on Sunday,” she told reporters when asked about Biden’s “menu” of options should the Senate deal not make it to his desk.
“Folks have been working on that for two months, and it is the toughest and the fairest piece of legislation that we’ve seen in decades,” Jean-Pierre continued. “We want to see this agreement move forward. I don’t have anything else to speak to.”
