Schumer on border talks: No deal yet
“We just have to figure out how to do it in a way that can get 60 votes here in the Senate and the majority of us there in the House,” the top Senate Democrat told reporters.
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The Senate returns to Washington next Monday and while the chamber’s top Democrat sounded an optimistic tone on Wednesday afternoon on the progress on an agreement to tighten US border security laws, the odds of negotiators reaching a deal by the start of the new session are dwindling.
“We need to fix the border. There’s virtually unanimous agreement among Democrats and Republicans about that,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters at the Capitol after presiding over a pro forma session of the Senate to formally convene the 118th Congress’s second session. “We just have to figure out how to do it in a way that can get 60 votes here in the Senate and the majority of us there in the House.” (Most major legislation requires the support of three-fifths of all senators to limit debate.)
House conservatives tied border security to a $106 billion emergency funding request President Biden submitted to Congress last October to support Ukraine and Israel in their respective wars against Ukraine and Hamas and to aid Taiwan in staving off aggression from the Chinese government.
The request included additional funding for border security, but House conservatives turned the president’s request into leverage to extract provisions in H.R. 2, their signature border bill that passed along party lines last year and has since stalled in the Senate.
Schumer said that if the Senate can pass a bipartisan agreement then it would pressure the House to sideline the handful of far-right members who are unlikely to support any type of compromise in the first place.
The House passed a stand-alone bill approving billions in Israel aid last November, but many House Democrats voted against it because it also rescinded billions of dollars in funding from the Inflation Reduction Act for the IRS to audit wealthy tax cheats. Schumer hasn’t brought the bill to the Senate floor for a vote.
The US government delivered its last assistance package to Ukraine last week and officials warned a lapse in aid could cost Ukraine the gains it claimed on the battlefield and embolden President Vladimir Putin of Russia to step up his attacks to capitalize of Ukraine’s military vulnerabilities.
White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Wednesday that Russia continues to launch drone and missile attacks on military and civilian targets. He added that when Ukraine exhausts the weapons in the latest package, the White House will no longer have the authority to replenish Ukraine’s stockpile.
“After that, absent supplemental funding, there’s no other magical pot to dip into to try to get support for Ukraine,” Kirby said. “I’m not aware of any band-aid fix that can be done.”
White House slams House GOP border visit as a political stunt
“Actions speak louder than words,” spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement defending President Biden’s immigration policies.
White House spokesperson Andrew Bates accused a group of House Republicans visiting the southern border to draw attention to the migrant crisis of playing politics with immigration instead of working in good faith to reach a compromise on a path forward.
“After voting in 2023 to eliminate over 2,000 Border Patrol agents and erode our capacity to seize fentanyl, House Republicans left Washington in mid-December even as President Biden and Republicans in the Senate remained to forge ahead on a bipartisan agreement,” Bates said in a statement.
The spokesperson called out House Speaker Mike Johnson(R-La.) for blocking Biden’s request for funding to reform the broken immigration system and pointed to a plan the president proposed on his first day in office to defend against criticism of the president’s policies.
“Actions speak louder than words,” Bates added. “House Republicans’ anti-border security record is defined by attempting to cut Custom and Border Protection personnel, opposing President Biden’s record-breaking border security funding, and refusing to take up the president’s supplemental funding request.
As Once Upon a Hill reported below, the border visit was coordinated by Rep. Tony Gonzales, who represents a Texas border community in the House GOP majority.
Bill Melugin of Fox News reports a group of House conservatives expressed an unreasonable demand to prevent any migration from the southern border as Senate negotiators
“Shut the border down or we’ll shut the government down,” Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Eli Crane (R-Ariz.), Bob Good (R-Va.) and Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) said to Melugin.
The comments come as Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) continue talks on a deal to tighten border security measures in exchange for billions of dollars in emergency international foreign aid President Biden requested last October.
The House members’ comments speak to why some congressional Democrats are skeptical Republicans will ever accept any deal on the border short of the anti-immigration policies the House GOP passed last summer without any Democratic votes.
Biden to mark Jan. 6th anniversary with major democracy speech
The speech near the historic Valley Forge military camp is the first of several January events as the president’s reelection bid ramps up.
President Joe Biden will travel on Friday to Pennsylvania near Valley Forge—the winter encampment of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War—to give a major speech on the third anniversary of the January 6th attack on the US Capitol. (Editor’s note: The Biden campaign moved the speech from Saturday due to impending inclement weather near the Philadelphia area).
The speech is expected to lay out the stakes of the 2024 election and frame the ideals of democracy and freedom that united the 13 colonies back then as central to the fight against the threats posed by former President Donald Trump’s autocratic impulses and the white nationalist beliefs of his most loyal supporters.
“Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, he knew he lost and followed through on a coordinated effort to overturn the results of that election,” House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar of California, who served on the January 6th Committee, said in a statement to Once Upon a Hill. “Rather than put our Constitution first, House Republicans sided with the mob that violently attacked law enforcement officers defending the US Capitol on January 6th. Make no mistake: Our democracy and the rule of law are on the ballot in 2024, and the American people will understand exactly what’s at stake when they head to the ballot box.”
The speech is the first of several political events Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris throughout the month as the president’s reelection campaign kicks into high gear.
Following the Valley Forge speech, Biden will travel to South Carolina to speak at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, where a white supremacist murdered churchgoers almost nine years ago.
“American is worried about the rise in the political violence and determined to stand against it,” Quentin Fulks, deputy campaign manager for the Biden reelection bid, said to reporters. “The president’s return to the Palmetto State marks the fourth time as president to talk directly to voters who propelled him to the highest office in the land four years ago.”
The vice president will be in South Carolina two days before Biden, her seventh visit to the state since becoming VP, to give the keynote address at the 7th Episcopal District AME Church Women’s Missionary Society Annual Retreat. (This will be an official event, not a political event, according to the campaign.)
And on January 22, the 51st anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, Harris will travel to battleground state Wisconsin to kick off a national tour to advocate for reproductive freedom as abortion rights remains a mobilizing issue for Democratic voters.
In addition to the high-profile events, the Biden campaign said it will invest significant resources to hide state leadership teams in every battleground state, diversifying its organizing efforts and scale up its paid media program.
The campaign said the plan had always been to gradually ramp up its operation and that these early efforts aren’t a reaction to Biden’s lagging poll numbers with key groups of his winning coalition.
No matter who’s up or down in any given moment, the election will be close and the campaign looks forward to energizing the voters who have the most at stack in the outcome.
”I don’t think that running this campaign, knowing that democracy is on the line is a detriment. I think it’s the strength of this campaign,” Fulks said. “We view it as our strength because we come to work every single day knowing exactly what we need to do and the case that we need to make to American voters, so that they turn out and vote and send Joe Biden and Kamala Harris back to the White House.”
Happenings: January 3, 2024
House Republicans travel to the southern border as Senate negotiators resume talks on tighter security measures.
👋🏾 Hi, hey, hello! It’s Wednesday, January 3, 2024. Here’s what’s happening in Congress and across national politics today:
The House and Senate are out. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) will be joined by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and 60 House Republicans at the southern border to call attention to the migrant crisis and call for stricter security measures. The visit comes as Senate negotiators work to reach an agreement on tighter border security policies to unlock billions of dollars in funding for Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific region. The negotiators hope to have a framework to share with their Senate colleagues when the chamber opens its 2024 session next Monday.
President Biden will receive his daily intelligence briefing at 2 p.m. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby will brief reporters at the same time.
Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff will arrive in Las Vegas from Los Angeles at 2:20 PM where she will give remarks and meet with hospitality workers of the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 at 3:35 p.m. as they celebrate their successful new contracts, which led to historic pay increases and workplace safety improvements. Harris will be joined by Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su. Harris and Emhoff will leave Las Vegas at 6:15 PM and return to Washington, DC at 10:15 PM.
All times Eastern
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