A key negotiator in a Senate package to fund Ukraine and make changes to border policy said on Jan. 28 that the package has been finished.
For months, Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), and others in the U.S. Senate have negotiated the specifics of the package.
As the war in Ukraine has dragged on with no clear path or strategy to victory on the terms that Ukraine has set, many Republican lawmakers have grown jaded with continued monetary support for the Eastern European nation. Under these conditions, Democrats have been forced to offer concessions on border policy and funding to obtain additional funding.
Now, Mr. Murphy says those negotiations have come to fruition—even as the eventual fate of the package in Congress remains highly uncertain.
“We do have a bipartisan deal. We’re finishing the text right now,” he told CNN’s “State of the Union.”
However, Mr. Murphy acknowledged the uncertainty in the package’s future.
Former President Donald Trump, who has a great influence on House lawmakers and some Senate lawmakers, has been lobbying against the package, which he has called “a bad deal.”
Mr. Murphy admitted that this raises difficulties.
“The question is whether Republicans are going to listen to Donald Trump, who wants to preserve chaos at the border because he thinks that it’s a winning political issue for him, or whether we are going to pass legislation which would be the biggest bipartisan reform of our border immigration laws in 40 years,” he said.
The details of the proposal have remained muddy, with some leaks purporting that the bill would allow up to 5,000 illegal aliens into the United States each day—up to 1.8 million per year. It would also allegedly authorize the issuance of 50,000 new green cards.
Despite President Trump’s lobbying, the package stands a much better chance in the Senate than in the House.
In the Senate, where Democrats hold 51 seats, only nine Republicans would need to sign onto the package for it to pass the upper chamber.
Still, there has been some opposition in the Senate.
“I’m still very concerned that we don’t share the same goals,” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) told The Epoch Times. “To me, this is a national security issue. To them [Democrats], this is an immigration issue—getting as many people they can across the border and Ukraine funding—that’s their priorities and their goals. So I’m very concerned.”
Still, he was hopeful that the impasse can be overcome.
“The reason I’m still at the table is I do think this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to secure the border,” Mr. Marshall said.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who has been skeptical of more Ukraine aid, told The Epoch Times that his biggest concern with the package is simple: “Secure the border.”
“I’m not seeing, in what’s being negotiated now, that it actually does that,” he said. “I can see it normalizing illegal migration to [4,000] or 5,000 persons per day.”
Despite this opposition, the package faces decent odds in the upper chamber—it’s in the House that the package’s fate remains most uncertain.
He and much of his caucus have pushed for H.R. 2—the border security package that they passed at the start of the 118th Congress—or nothing.
As speaker, Mr. Johnson has nearly unilateral authority to decide what does and doesn’t come to the House floor.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) told The Epoch Times that, during a conversation with the speaker on the House floor, he promised not to bring the package to a vote.
This impasse can be overcome by a handful of parliamentary maneuvers, but none of these is guaranteed to work.
Biden Promises Border Shutdown
Trying to salvage the deal, President Joe Biden, who’s been involved in negotiations at some stages, has offered to shut down the border “right now” if Congress sends the package to his desk.“A bipartisan bill would be good for America and help fix our broken immigration system and allow speedy access for those who deserve to be here, and Congress needs to get it done,” he said. “It’ll also give me, as president, the emergency authority to shut down the border until it could get back under control. If that bill were the law today, I’d shut down the border right now and fix it quickly.”
“President Biden falsely claimed yesterday he needs Congress to pass a new law to allow him to close the southern border, but he knows that is untrue,” the House speaker wrote.
Mr. Johnson argued that President Biden already has the authority he needs to shut down the border under the Immigration and Nationality Act.
He listed a series of changes that the president could make right now, including ending the catch-and-release policy, reinstating President Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” program, expediting removal authorities, and continuing construction on the border wall.
“The President must start by using the broad legal authority he already possesses to reclaim our nation’s sovereignty and end the mass release of illegal aliens into our country,” Mr. Johnson said.
It’s unclear what’s next for the package, but Mr. Murphy suggested that it could come to a vote in the Senate as early as this week.
