Senate border talks come down to the wire amid Schumer deadline
Emily Jacobs
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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) hopes to bring President Joe Biden‘s supplemental defense spending bill up for a vote as soon as this week, leaving negotiators with little time to come together on a bipartisan border security deal.
Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), the lead GOP negotiator in the border deal talks, said on Monday that negotiators “continue to work to find a solution that will protect our national security, stop the human trafficking and prevent the cartels from exploiting the obvious loopholes in our law.”
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“That is the goal & we will continue to work until we get it right,” he added.
Key negotiators on the agreement, which was supposed to be included in Biden’s supplemental defense spending bill, said late last week that they were at a stalemate following days of no progress.
Republicans have cautioned since Biden sent Congress the $106 billion request that Ukraine aid has no path to passage in the House without a substantial set of border policy changes.
As a result, a bipartisan coalition of senators has been working on a possible border agreement for weeks. The talks have centered on possible changes to federal asylum policy and how the Biden administration uses the humanitarian parole authority.
Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have fully supported the effort to combine Israel and Ukraine aid. The two have backed the inclusion of border security, though they differ on some of the specifics, as a means by which to push the bill through both chambers. Taiwan assistance was also included to help broaden support for the bill.
If they can reach an agreement, that legislation is expected to pass the Senate with bipartisan support but could face a tough path forward in the House without a major set of border policy changes. Even if Republicans were to secure concessions from Democrats in the current Senate negotiations, the legislation would face considerable opposition from House GOP lawmakers who oppose Ukraine aid.
Were Schumer to concede to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and separate the bills, individual legislation could have difficulty passing on their own in the Senate. Democrats control the chamber 51-49 and would need full party support and nine Republicans to pass legislation altering border policy.
Should the House tank the upper chamber’s supplemental legislation, however, the Senate would be forced to take each of the bills up separately, which one Republican member of leadership speaking on condition of anonymity said would be tricky.
The Republican said the Senate does not have a clear path to pass the supplemental in pieces. The Ukraine funding would lack GOP votes, but the border funding would cause at least a few Democratic defections.
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Packaged together, the measure could have enough votes to cross the finish line in both chambers, though the timing would be far from ideal. The chamber will spend December working on the supplemental deal, finishing its appropriations process, and confirming hundreds of stalled military nominations.
Passing the bills, either as a package or individually, is still a must-do for both Senate leaders. McConnell has been privately meeting with a group of Republican senators to discuss strategies for passing an aid package, a source familiar with the matter told the Washington Examiner.