It's Alive!
It's Alive!
The Frankenstein Foreign Aid package pretending to be a Border Security bill keeps reappearing with new body parts stitched on; the monstrosity still doesn't secure the border.
Yesterday, after four months of secret negotiation, Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell released the Frankenstein monstrosity of “emergency” spending (can it really still be an emergency four months later?) that cobbles together a milquetoast immigration package that does little to address the current border security and illegal immigrant crisis with the largest foreign aid package in the history of the United States. There’s $60 billion for Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel, but Border Security is an afterthought with only $20B (17%) of the spending in the bill. As any person with a pulse could have predicted it was immediately rejected by the Speaker of the House and his Republican colleagues in the House and Senate, except for Mitch McConnell’s closest allies who worked on the secret negotiation. Speaker Johnson, in a joint release with House leadership, declared that:
House Republicans oppose the Senate immigration bill because it fails in every policy area needed to secure our border and would actually incentivize more illegal immigration.
Among its many flaws, the bill expands work authorizations for illegal aliens while failing to include critical asylum reforms. Even worse, its language allowing illegals to be ‘released from physical custody’ would effectively endorse the Biden ‘catch and release’ policy.
The so-called ‘shutdown’ authority in the bill is anything but, riddled with loopholes that grant far too much discretionary authority to Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas – who has proven he will exploit every measure possible, in defiance of the law, to keep the border open.
The bill also fails to adequately stop the President’s abuse of parole authority and provides for taxpayer funds to fly and house illegal immigrants in hotels through the FEMA Shelter and Services Program.
This bill was always dead on arrival, and it was always just a cover for the complete dereliction of duty by the Biden and administration on the border.
Other reactions include Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee:
“I will never vote to make illegal immigration legal.”
“The border deal is even worse than we thought. No one who cares about our border security should support it. It is a betrayal of the American people.”
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky:
[this]"…new border law ‘never closes’ the border, and, of course, the entire $118 billion will be borrowed. Nothing, absolutely nothing, conservative about this deal. This predictable revelation is only a week old, and yet the Swamp's new ‘border security’ bill gives Ukraine $60 billion more….from the squandering of your money to the fake border reforms, it's safe to declare this bill as anti-American. I'm a NO."
And perhaps the most important strike against the bill comes from one of its main proponents, Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut (emphasis added):
“A requirement the President to funnel asylum claims to the land ports of entry when more than 5,000 people cross a day. The border never closes, but claims must be processed at the ports.”
The irony should be lost on no one that the bill is primarily meant to pass Ukraine aid - with more than half of the $118B package going to Ukraine (on the heels of a huge windfall of $54B for Ukraine from the EU) but the administration and their allies in Congress are selling it as a border security and immigration reform bill. It reminds us of the Inflation Reduction Act that was really the Green New Deal (and a disaster itself as consumers don’t want the EVs pushed by the Biden Administration in that law). Our leaders in Congress and our President like to tell the American people they are passing one thing when they are really passing another.
Indeed, the Biden Administration is so afraid to let Biden speak about it in public that they’ve just announced he will snub tradition and not do a pre-Super Bowl interview.
While Senate negotiators spent months rearranging the border language in some aimless attempt to find support for it, they and the Administration continue to ignore the fact that the main issue every Republican (and most importantly the American people, who when last polled opposed any additional Ukraine funding 55-45) is that it is tied up with Ukraine. The bill was always dead on arrival in this Washington approach to stuffing the sausage with pork barrel waste.
As we wrote in August, in October and write again now, there is a simple solution to this deadlock. Offer up the three main policies as separate bills and have a vote on each - Ukraine, Israel and Immigration. The Israel funding will pass overwhelmingly; the other two will likely not. That is the sense of the House of Representatives, a large minority in the Senate and most importantly the American people. Let’s stop playing games and move forward as a nation.