GOP border showdown looms between Senate, House

The Senate is poised for a border showdown with the House as it gets ready to move ahead with legislation, despite Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) warning that it is likely dead on arrival in the lower chamber.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and his allies aren’t ignoring Johnson, but they’re betting if the legislation passes the Senate with strong Republican support, Johnson will come under heavy pressure to put it up for a vote in the lower chamber.

Senior aides say they expect the legislation to reach the Senate floor before the end of next week, though leaders haven’t yet formally announced a decision on timing.

If Johnson doesn’t act on the bill, House Republicans would risk getting blamed for abandoning Ukraine on the battlefield and undermining American credibility with its allies. 

They would allow Democrats to hammer them for blocking reforms to significantly reduce the flow of migrants across the southern border.

“I think it can pass the Senate because there are enough Senate Republicans who have been working on this bill for four or five months. There were also a lot of Senate Republicans who were there in 2013 when we got 68 votes for bipartisan immigration reform only to see it die in the House. Those people still know that we need to solve the problem and they’re willing to work on it despite what Donald Trump is trying to do,” said Jonathan Kott, a Democratic strategist and former Senate aide.

Fourteen Republican senators voted for a sweeping immigration reform bill 10 years ago that would have hired 20,000 border patrol agents and required the government to construct 700 miles of fencing, but it never reached the floor of the GOP-controlled House. Former President Obama was in office at the time.

Former President Trump has made an already difficult situation for Johnson even tougher by declaring Republicans should oppose the bill to deny President Biden a legislative victory, calling it a “gift to the Radical Left Democrats” who “need it politically.”

“There’s a danger. If Republicans say the stated reason why we are turning our back on this deal is expressly political, there’s obvious political danger in that,” said Scott Jennings, a Republican strategist who has advised McConnell’s past campaigns.

Jennings said it’s tough for Republicans who support the border security deal to defend it to fellow GOP critics because the entire text of it has yet to be made public.

But McConnell and his top deputy, Senate GOP Whip John Thune (S.D.), argue that Democrats have made major concessions on reforming asylum law, and this is a unique opportunity to toughen the nation’s immigration laws that might not be available if Republicans win back control of the White House and Senate.

They reason that under unified GOP control of Washington, Democrats would block any reforms from moving through the Senate, where most bills need 60 votes to move.

McConnell and his allies are ramping up their argument that the GOP needs to show voters it knows how to govern, and funding the war in Ukraine and making substantial progress to tightening border security would do just that.

“If we don’t get this done, it will not get done in a Trump administration. We will not have the votes,” warned Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who has been involved in the talks.

“If we do our work and we get the endorsement of key organizations, like the Border Patrol Council, go out law enforcement, go down and talk to Texas officials, do the work, then I do believe that we will give Speaker Johnson a lot of things to consider to try to move it forward,” he said.

Jennings, the GOP strategist, said Trump could take some political credit if the bill passes by claiming he put the issue of border security in the spotlight during his presidency.

More critically, he said House Republicans could show they can govern after months of turmoil and chaos — when Congress flirted with a national default in June, then a government shutdown at the end of September, and three weeks of infighting after booting former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) from his job.

“The biggest victory may be showing governing responsibility. We control one of two chambers and that’s it. To get policy movement when you don’t control but one part of it, that would be a victory for the Republican Party,” he said.

McConnell, however, is getting strong pushback from Senate conservatives, who are accusing him of putting Johnson in a bind by moving ahead with a Ukraine funding bill that includes the border security reforms negotiated by Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and White House officials.

“Why on earth would you be teeing up a vote with every Democrat and 10 or 12 Republicans that has no chance of passing the House?” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) demanded of his leadership last week.

“The only purpose of taking this up is giving Democrats political cover to say, ‘Gosh, we would have secured the border, but those pesky House Republicans wouldn’t let us,’” he declared. “This bill represents Senate Republican leadership waging war on House Republican leadership.”

McConnell and his allies have had a hard time parrying conservatives’ attacks on the border deal because many details of the bill remain secret.  

Murphy, the lead Democratic negotiator, announced over the weekend that senators have a deal on the border security provisions and are now finishing up the text of the complicated legislation. 

McConnell at a Senate GOP conference meeting last week floated the idea of dropping the border security provisions from Ukraine funding, but he didn’t recommend that option and later backed away from it at a Thursday lunch after some GOP colleagues who favor a border deal expressed their displeasure at the idea of splitting the issues.

One Republican senator who requested anonymity to discuss the tensions between Senate and House GOP leaders said passing a border security deal through the Senate would put Johnson in a tough position because he could lose his job if he puts it on the House floor.

“I think has a lot of influence in the House and particularly with Johnson. I think [Trump] coming out strong against this really puts Johnson in a bind. I don’t think Johnson can pass this,” the senator said.