House Speaker Mike Johnson and fellow Republican leaders on Monday dismissed Democrats’ plans to hold a do-over vote on President Biden’s border bill, saying it’s “dead on arrival.”
The declaration came just hours after Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, said he would hold a revote on the bill, which fell victim to a bipartisan filibuster in February.
House GOP leaders said Mr. Schumer is “trying to give his vulnerable members cover” with the new vote. But Mr. Johnson and fellow Republicans said the measure Mr. Schumer is pushing wouldn’t solve the chaos at the border and “would actually codify many of the disastrous Biden open border policies that created this crisis in the first place.”
“Should it reach the House, the bill would be dead on arrival,” he and his leadership team said in a joint statement.
The bill includes some new powers to block migrants crossing the border illegally and expands the capacity to detain immigrants without documentation rather than release them, albeit with significant limitations and carveouts. It also changes asylum standards to help block bogus claims earlier in the process.
It was negotiated by one Republican senator, one Democratic senator and one independent senator who caucuses with Democrats.
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It failed earlier this year when it was attached to a broader international aid bill that funded Ukraine’s war with Russia and Israel’s war with Hamas. With most Republicans and a handful of Democrats opposing it, the legislation garnered just 49 votes, well shy of the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.
Democrats are unlikely to change that calculus with the revote.
Instead, the goal seems to be to match House Republicans, who have been holding at least one floor vote each week to condemn the border chaos.
Mr. Schumer says Republicans can’t continue to complain about the border and then reject the bipartisan bill that would give Mr. Biden more flexibility to address the chaos.
He blamed former President Donald Trump for the GOP’s resistance to the bill, saying Republicans’ presumptive presidential nominee didn’t want to see something that would solve the border for Mr. Biden.
Republicans counter that they passed a comprehensive border bill last year that would have restored the Trump-era policies that produced a largely secure border. They also argue that Mr. Biden erased those policies through executive action, and he could restore them without turning to Congress.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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