(ConservativeSense.com) – Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell seems to be signaling retreat and urging GOP members of the Senate to oppose the much-debated border bill recently unveiled in the Democrat-dominated chamber.
House Republicans who have been critical of the $118 billion bill warned that the package will not only fail to solve the southern border crisis but may also provide President Joe Biden with a seemingly bipartisan victory to bolster his 2024 presidential campaign as he gears up for a potential rematch with former President Donald Trump.
Several GOP Senators have already openly opposed the bill, which has prompted McConnell to take the same position and urge the rest of the party’s senators to block it. Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, has also been slamming the bill, which he says basically “legalizes illegal immigration.”
News of the move by McConnell came from Andrew Desiderio, a reporter from Punchbowl News. Desiderio said that “multiple sources” confirmed to him that, behind closed doors, the Minority Leader “recommended” that GOP senators block the bill on Wednesday, Feb. 7, because most were already preparing to oppose it anyway. McConnell reportedly said the problem wasn’t with what Sen. James Lankford negotiated in the bill but that “the political mood in the country has changed.”
Even if it passes the Senate, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said it would be “dead on arrival.” Johnson, Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana, Majority Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota, and Chairwoman Elise Stefanik of New York released a joint statement on Monday, Feb. 5, effectively killing the package.
The statement said that House Republicans are opposed to it because the bill “fails in every policy area needed” to secure the southern border and even incentivizes “more illegal immigration.”
One of the flaws they pointed out is the expansion of work authorizations for immigrants who crossed the border illegally without “critical asylum reforms.” The House Republicans also claim the bill’s language would “effectively endorse” the Biden administration’s policy of “catch and release.”
The letter laid out multiple other issues and said it’s “a waste of time” to consider the bill “in its current form,” encouraging the Senate “to reject it.”
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