Senate Republicans are urging their Democratic colleagues to slow down what some in the party are calling a “rushed” negotiation on a bipartisan border security deal that is currently holding up passage of the defense supplemental spending package.
A bipartisan working group of senators has spent weeks negotiating a border security deal, which would be added to a defense spending bill that includes aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Negotiators on both sides have acknowledged that the border measure is critical to passing the legislation through both chambers.
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Negotiators stayed in Washington, D.C., over the weekend to meet about the potential deal and will continue talks this week. Their Senate colleagues will join them starting on Monday, when the upper chamber will gather despite it being Christmas recess to begin confirming the 11 stalled four-star generals held over from Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-AL) blanket hold on military promotions.
Sens. James Lankford (R-OK) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) have been leading the negotiations, which have centered largely on changes to federal asylum policy and how the Biden administration uses the humanitarian parole authority. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) has also been heavily involved in the talks.
There have also been reports that the White House has offered to establish a new border expulsion law and increase mandatory detention rates as part of the negotiations, though no one from the Senate working group or the Biden administration has confirmed as much publicly.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Lankford wrote in an email to GOP senators on Sunday that, “While there is progress being made in the border discussions there are significant issues still under discussion and a lot of very technical work on drafting which takes time to get right.”
The message, which was obtained by the Washington Examiner via two recipients, noted that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has the ability to bring the legislative shell back up for another cloture vote, though “no firm decision has been made.” Republicans blocked Democrats’ last attempt at bringing up the shell before a border deal was reached, something McConnell vowed to do again if Schumer were to do the same.
“Without text and sufficient time to review it, it would not succeed,” McConnell and Lankford’s email read.
Murphy and Sinema both described the note as reasonable when asked by reporters about it outside Schumer’s office on Sunday.
“I’m not going to vote for a bill unless I have text,” Murphy said.
Two other Republicans, Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), cautioned on Sunday that Democrats’ speed and overall approach to handling this bipartisan package was rubbing some in the party the wrong way.
“I talked to a couple of key negotiators yesterday,” Cornyn said on Fox News Sunday. “They feel like they are making some progress, but I know Senator Schumer thinks there is going to be a deal cut behind closed doors and then jam it through the Senate and then jam the House. That’s not going to happen. But we are making some progress.”
“The bottom line here is we feel like we’re being jammed,” Graham said on NBC’s Meet the Press, speaking for Republicans. “We’re not anywhere close to a deal.”
Graham predicted that the effort to reach a deal and pass the package “will go into next year,” and he criticized the White House for not getting involved in negotiations earlier this fall.
A group of 15 GOP senators, including Graham, sent a letter to Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Barrasso (R-WY) requesting he schedule a meeting for members to discuss the negotiations in his capacity as a member of leadership.
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“Rushed and secret negotiations with Democrats who want an open border and who caused the current crisis will not secure the border,” the group, led by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), wrote. “The American public deserves an open and transparent process which cannot occur until the House returns the week of January 8, 2024.”
Reached for comment by the Washington Examiner, a Barrasso spokeswoman said, “Chairman Barrasso received a request from 15 colleagues for a conference meeting on immigration. He will work with all Republican Senators to schedule the meeting.”
