President Joe Biden tried to name and shame House Republicans for opposing more funding for Ukraine without concessions regarding border security and immigration.
“This cannot wait,” Biden said Wednesday. “Congress needs to pass supplemental funding for Ukraine before they break for the holiday recess. It’s as simple as that. Frankly, I think it’s stunning that we’ve gotten to this point in the first place.”
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He mentioned the possibility of American troops fighting Russian troops, arguing that success in Ukraine could buoy Russian President Vladimir Putin to attack another NATO country.
“Republicans in Congress are willing to give Putin the greatest gift he could hope for,” the president stated.
“Extreme Republicans are playing chicken with our national security, holding Ukraine’s funding hostage to their extreme partisan border policies,” Biden added while issuing critiques of the GOP’s attempts to tie major concessions on border policy to the president’s supplemental request. “Republicans think they can get everything they want without any bipartisan compromise. That’s not the answer.”
Biden did signal his greatest willingness to date to negotiate “substantive” policy changes to stem the flow of northern migration but still chided Republicans for rejecting proposals from Democratic lawmakers. He mentioned by name GOP Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma who had been leading Senate border talks.
“We’re willing to do significantly more. Particularly they started off equipping the border capacity that we need on the border, from judges to more border security, in addition to making some substantive changes, but they’re unwilling to do it,” Biden said.
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“I really — I felt good for a while. I thought we were making some real progress. Lankford is a decent guy, and he looked like he was prepared to move in a way, in a direction, and we could come up with a compromise,” he stated. “But they walked away. It’s, ‘take everything we have here. Their one proposal, which is extreme, or nothing. In the meantime, the nothing means we don’t get any support for our friends and our innocent people of Ukraine.”
You can watch Biden’s remarks in full below.
