No aid for Israel, no aid for Ukraine, no fix for the broken asylum process -- thanks to Donald Trump and Mike Johnson
While I was away, legislation that would have provided military aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, while also changing the way the U.S. treats immigrants seeking asylum at the border, died in the Senate. Actually, that legislation was essentially dead when I left, Speaker Johnson having said that, if passed by the Senate, it would be “dead on arrival” in the House.
While I was away, the Senate also went ahead and passed legislation appropriating military aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan without doing anything about the border. But this legislation might well die in the House, Speaker Johnson having complained that it doesn’t offer “any single border policy change.”
So, first the Speaker nixed aid to Ukraine and Israel legislation that offered multiple border policy changes. Now, he wants to nix aid to Ukraine and Israel legislation because it doesn’t offer any single border policy change.
It’s almost enough to make me yearn for the leadership of Kevin McCarthy.
There’s no question that the Ukraine-Israel-immigration legislation contained policy changes regarding the border. The question was whether those changes would make a difference.
Most Republican Senators said no. So did Mike Johnson.
However, the union representing border patrol agents said yes. "This is absolutely better than what we currently have," National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd stated. He explained that the expulsion authorities in the act, coupled with the act’s increased detention resources, would reduce illegal crossings.
I think I’ll take the word of the union whose members are on the front line of the border crisis every day (and which, by the way, has previously endorsed Donald Trump) over the views of politicians trying to stay on the good side of Trump and curry favor with the MAGA base.
But we don’t need to take anyone’s word for anything. The objections to the border legislation plainly lacked merit.
The most-voiced objection was that the bill allowed for the admission of 4,999 illegal immigrants into the U.S. every day. This was simply false, as I explained here. The legislation did not permit up to 5,000 illegal entries per day. If 4,999 immigrants were to show up in a day, they would not have been granted entry. They would have gone into a toughened, expedited, and beefed up removal process.
A second objection was that Joe Biden could do all of the things the bill would have done, so why do we need the legislation? This argument is both false and ridiculous. It’s false because Biden can’t do all of the things the bill would have done. For example, he cannot appropriate $6 billion in supplemental funding for ICE enforcement, including for the facilities needed to detain immigrants awaiting action on their asylum petitions.
It’s also highly unlikely that, without the legislation, Biden could close the border, as the legislation would have required at current levels of immigrants seeking entry. If Biden tried to, he would likely be thwarted by the judiciary.
It’s true that 8 U.S.C. §1182(f) grants the president what, on paper, looks like broad authority. He can “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants” whenever he “finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”
However, Trump was unable to use this authority to keep asylum seekers out. That’s why he had to restrict entry by using his authority to deal with health emergencies. But now, with the pandemic over, neither Biden nor Trump could close the border on that basis.
Indeed, it’s rich to hear Trump-supporting members of Congress claim that Biden can do on his own the things the legislation would have authorized. When he was president, Trump insisted that he needed Congress to pass new legislation to make it more difficult for migrants to claim asylum. This is the core of what the now-dead legislation he opposed would have done.
In any case, even if it were factually valid, the Biden-can-do-all-these-things claim would still be a ridiculous argument against the deal. It’s the very nature of a deal that one side does something it would rather not in exchange for the other side doing something it would rather not.
Biden would rather not do some of the things in the immigration deal, even if he had the power to do them. A deal that requires him to do these things cannot logically be opposed because he could do them if he wanted to.
Biden could fire Alejandro Mayorkas, but he doesn’t want to. If Republicans struck an informal deal in which Biden fired Mayorkas in exchange for GOP concessions, no one could rationally oppose the deal on the ground that Biden can fire Mayorkas without the deal.
A third objection was that Biden can’t be trusted to enforce the provisions of the immigration deal. This objection is also rich because it was Speaker Johnson and other Republicans who demanded (and still demand) an immigration reform bill in exchange for approving money for Ukraine. To be effective, any immigration reform legislation would require presidential enforcement. If Biden can’t be trusted with enforcement, why did Johnson and others demand immigration reform legislation?
As to the merits of the can’t-trust-Biden objection, it seems highly unlikely that, in an election year with immigration the GOP’s number one issue, Biden would refuse to enforce immigration reform legislation passed with the overwhelming support of Democratic members of Congress. Doing so would risk handing the presidency to Trump.
Enforcement might not be as robust as we would like, but the notion that Biden would blow off the law is far-fetched. Certainly, the border patrol union must have seen it that way. Otherwise, it would not have backed the legislation.
What about after the election, though? Assuming Biden wins, he might well blow off aspects of the legislation at that point. But in that case, America still would have received the benefit of the law for the better part of a year.
More importantly, if Trump wins, a scenario about as likely as one in which Biden does, he would have had the kind of authority he pleaded with Congress to get during his first term. As things stand now, by contrast, he would lack that authority and would once again be stymied by the courts.
Having said all this, I don’t want to be too critical of Republican Senators who opposed the immigration-military aid legislation. They knew that, if passed by the Senate, the deal would die in the House. Why incur the wrath of Trump and risk facing a tough primary fight to support a bill that can’t be enacted into law?
This brings me back to where I started — to Speaker Johnson. He’s the one who demanded immigration reform as a condition for aiding Ukraine but then killed the package based on meritless, and in some cases ridiculous, objections. And now, as noted, he’s opposing Senate-passed legislation to aid Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan because nothing is being done about the border.
Thus, as things stand, there will be no aid to Ukraine, no aid to Israel, and no immigration reform. But, hey, at least Johnson was able to impeach Mayorkas on the second try — a meaningless gesture (it won’t get the support of even 50 Senators) that sets a precedent for wasting huge amounts of time impeaching Cabinet officers in the future.
I’ve seen some excuse the Congress’ failure to act on the grounds that it’s difficult for Congress to do significant things in an election year. But the Federal-Aid Highway Act was passed in 1956. The most consequential civil rights bill in American history was passed in 1964. A major overhaul of our welfare system was passed in 1996.
In addition, the Clean Air Act was passed in 1970 with major amendments in 1990. These were election years, albeit not presidential elections.
What seems truly difficult is for Congress to accomplish significant things in an election year when Donald Trump is running. Trump’s demands are the underlying reason why the GOP has stalemated things. He believes that doing something to improve the situation at the border would help Biden, so he wants the crisis to fester and grow.
Yet, by killing immigration reform, Speaker Johnson and his caucus might have handed Biden a get-out-of-jail card. Now, he and other Democrats can blame the border crisis, at least in part, on the fact that Republicans — at Trump’s insistence — wouldn’t back “bipartisan” legislation to fix the problem.
This is how the Democrats see it (or at least are spinning it). Chuck Schumer has called Trump's rejection of the border legislation “a gift” for Democrats. He says that Dems now can “constantly over the next year” remind voters that it was Republicans who torpedoed the deal.
Schumer and others support this view by citing the relatively comfortable victory of Tom Suozzi in this week’s special election in New York. Early GOP polling found that the immigration issue was hurting Suozzi badly. Eventually, however, he was able to go on the attack in part by noting his support for the immigration deal and GOP rejection of it.
Clearly, there were other factors at play in the special election. Anyway, one shouldn’t read too much into a single election in which turnout apparently was fairly low.
The truth is that we don’t know how, if at all, the Trump-inspired rejection of immigration reform will affect the outcome in November. Maybe Trump’s take is correct, though it’s worth noting that he has led the GOP to three consecutive poor election day showings, so his political acumen is subject to doubt.
For me, the bottom line is that three worthy measures — aid to Ukraine, aid to Israel, and beneficial immigration reform — have been blocked, at least for now. And it’s the GOP that blocked them.