No. of Recommendations: 1
You've been proven
wrong on this.
Speaker Johnson told his caucus on January 13th the bill was a nonstarter. Here's the link again:
thehill.com - Border bill senate speaker johnson oppositionJohnson reportedly told his members on a conference call over the weekend that the border cannot be secured without a Republican in the White House, and Saturday circulated a Fox News display laying out what it believed to be in the bill and said he would “absolutely not” accept that package.This article was dated
January 17, a Wednesday. The Saturday mentioned in the article refers to
January 13.
If the republicans had felt they would have had overwhelming bipartisan opposition to that bill, they would have brought it to the floor in a heartbeat because that kind of lack of support for president Biden by his own party would have been an enormous embarrassment for him in an election year.No, just the opposite. By bringing the bill the to the floor Johnson indicates a willingness to accept the premise the Senate democrats put forth and by doing so opens the door to negotiating things like how many illegals do we let in a day between Ports of Entry. Since he wasn't going to accept the baseline premises of the bill on their face, he wasn't going to bother with it.
On the contrary, republicans -- who frequently don't know how to count votes -- were afraid of going on record voting "no" on a bill endorsed by the National Border Patrol Council, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page and supported by 66% of Americans.That bill was going to fail in the Senate anyway, and it did. More than once:
politico.com - Senate border vote schumer biden executive actionThe border policy package was the product of bipartisan negotiations between Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and James Lankford (R-Okla.) last winter. It was originally tied to aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, but foreign aid passed independent of border provisions after the first vote on the deal failed. Murphy reintroduced the border package as a standalone bill this month.
Several senators flipped to vote against the legislation this time around, including Sinema, Lankford and Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.).This bill was never popular, not at any point in its life.
