Border security bill dead in Senate, Israel aid doomed in House

The bipartisan border security bill that the Senate spent three months negotiating is dead two days after it was publicly released. House Republican leadership immediately said they won’t bring it up for a vote and a growing number of Senate Republicans won’t support it.

Now, Senate GOP leadership indicated a vote on the bill will fail. 

“We have no real chance here to make a law,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters Tuesday, Feb. 6. 

“People have not had enough time to read the bill. It is inadequate. So I agree with our whip, I don’t think this will pass and I think we need to move on,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.V., said.  

One of the biggest supporters of negotiating the border security and foreign aid provisions together, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., came out against the bill, serving as one of the final nails in the coffin. 

“After reviewing the bill text, there are provisions that are highly problematic, especially considering the fact that President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas caused this border crisis and have refused to use existing laws already on the books to address it,” Tillis said in statement announcing his decision. “It is hard to trust that the Biden Administration would even implement this bill in good faith.”

I commend Senator Lankford for the hard work he put in during months of negotiations, especially on asylum and parole reform, and he secured the best deal he could with an administration that tried to put up every roadblock imaginable. With that said, I have repeatedly said it…

— Senator Thom Tillis (@SenThomTillis) February 6, 2024

Democrats blame the bill’s impending failure on former President Donald Trump. 

“Republicans have definitively sided with Donald Trump,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said. “They’ve decided they want to keep chaos at the border because it is a political winner for them.”

“Even though it helps the country he’s not for it,” President Joe Biden said of Trump. “He’d rather weaponize this issue than actually solve it.”

Democrats said they’re angry with Republicans for making demands regarding border security provisions, then backing out. 

“Republicans need to get their balls out of Trump’s desk and vote for this s–t you’ve been asking for for months,” Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., said. 

The bill would have overhauled the country’s asylum laws, provided $650 million to build more border wall and required the Department of Homeland Security to immediately deport anyone who tries to cross the border if the weekly average crossings hit 5,000 per day. The package would have also given billions to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. 

It was negotiated by Sens. Murphy, Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., and James Lankford, R-Okla., who believed there could still be a chance for the bill to move forward.

“Let’s talk about the amendments, what needs to be done at the end of the day, the worst case scenario is to do nothing,” Lankford told reporters.  

Nothing is going to happen for now. House Republicans introduced a standalone bill to provide $17.6 billion to Israel but it needed a two-thirds vote for approval. 

House Democratic leaders announced they would vote “no” earlier in the day. They called it a “nakedly obvious and cynical attempt by MAGA extremists to undermine the possibility of a comprehensive, bipartisan funding package.”

While a comprehensive immigration and foreign aid package is dead for now, there may still be an effort to pass the foreign aid separately.