The border deal between the White House and Senate Republicans that seemed dead Thursday appears to have been resurrected.
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is now denying earlier reports that he has given up on a border deal with Democrats. And lead negotiator Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) has said the legislation is “90%-plus” written. The lead Republican negotiator, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), has also expressed optimism.
Enter the Wall Street Journal editorial board with a piece this morning making the case for a border deal with the Democrats that will solve the problem.
The WSJ warns that the GOP’s “window for a rare accomplishment is waning” and that “giving up on a border security bill would be a self-inflicted GOP wound” because “President (Joe) Biden would claim, with cause, that Republicans want border chaos as an election issue rather than solving the problem.”
There’s that phrase again: solving the problem. But would the deal actually do that? The WSJ doesn’t really explain how.
The editorial board does claim that the bill would “fix asylum law and the parole loophole that Mr. Biden has exploited.” But Democrats famously have said they will not agree to gutting Biden’s parole authority.
And the new asylum denial authorities in the bill don’t even kick in until at least 5,000 immigrants have been released into the United States in a single day. There is nothing conservative about writing into law the right of Democratic presidents to catch and release 5,000 illegal immigrants a day — that’s 1.8 million a year — before a new authority to deny them entry kicks in.
More importantly, our immigration law already forbids Biden from releasing immigrants into the U.S. in three separate places. Biden already ignores these existing mandates not to release immigrants into the country by citing his constitutional prosecutorial discretion power.
Creating two new laws that Biden will ignore anyway, thanks to prosecutorial discretion, is worthless.
Worst of all, along with creating a bunch of piddling new authorities Biden only would continue to ignore, the bill also includes a multi-billion dollar bailout of Democratic sanctuary cities and states. The WSJ never mentions this.
To the extent that there is a “window for a rare accomplishment” — it is entirely because Democratic mayors and governors are desperate for a federal bailout to pay for the housing, food, education, and healthcare of all the immigrants who are busting their budgets.
If Lankford and McConnell bail these jurisdictions out, that truly will be the end of this “window” for real border security reform.
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The rest of the WSJ editorial deals with the need to send more aid to Ukraine. I agree that Ukraine needs our support. But that is why it was always a mistake for McConnell and other Ukraine supporters to link it with border security. Democrats were never going to do a 180-degree flip on border security in time for Ukraine to get the aid it needs.
The best path for Senate Republicans right now is to punt on the border, let sanctuary cities feel more fiscal pain, and help Ukraine by pairing its help with aid for Israel.