By David Morgan and Andy Sullivan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday cast doubt on a bipartisan effort to tighten border security, saying Democratic President Joe Biden does not need new laws to tackle the problem, signaling that a compromise being negotiated faces long odds of passage.
The top Republican in Congress, in his first formal speech since taking the speaker’s gavel in October, said a deal taking shape in the Senate does not go far enough to prevent migrants from entering the country along the U.S.-Mexico border.
“From what we’ve heard, this so-called deal does not include transformational policy changes that are needed to actually stop the border catastrophe,” he said in remarks on the House floor.
Johnson’s remarks made clear that any bipartisan compromise to emerge from the Democratic-majority Senate would face a difficult reception in the House, which his Republicans control by a 219-213 margin.
Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, has called on lawmakers to reject any deal ahead of the November elections that will determine control of the White House and Congress.
That would leave emergency aid to Ukraine and Israel in doubt, as House Republicans have said that they will not sign off on more money absent tighter border controls. They are also advancing an impeachment effort of Biden’s top border official, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, though they are unlikely to succeed in persuading the Senate to remove him from office.
Biden’s administration has struggled to cope with record numbers of migrants seeking asylum along the U.S.-Mexico border, and opinion polls show that immigration is a top concern of voters.
Immigration ranked as Americans’ second-greatest worry in a Reuters/Ipsos poll published on Wednesday, with 17% of respondents saying it was their top concern, a sharp increase from the December reading.
Johnson cast the issue in apocalyptic terms, claiming that illegal immigrants have displaced children from classrooms and veterans from retirement homes.
“The Department of Homeland Security has effectively become a taxi driver to just help traffickers complete the last few miles of their human smuggling operation,” he said.
He said Biden already has the authority to prevent unauthorized entry into the country by reinstating policies Trump put in place during his 2017-2021 presidency, such as requiring migrants to remain in Mexico while they wait for their asylum cases to be heard.
“Any attempt by this president to pretend that he’s a bystander bereft of any ability to secure the border is patently absurd,” he said.
‘MAJOR, MAJOR POLICY CHANGES’
Independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema, one of the three negotiators on the Senate talks, painted a different picture of the bill being written.
“These are major, major policy changes, unlike anything that you’ve seen implemented by prior administrations by administrative action,” Sinema told reporters.
No. 2 Senate Republican John Thune said party leaders hope to get a clearer idea of where Republican lawmakers stand on a border deal during a meeting on Wednesday.
“The complicating factor of the message is coming out of the House,” Thune told reporters. “That’s a factor, obviously, that we’ll have to take into consideration.”
With a narrow Republican majority, Johnson has had to rely on Democratic votes to pass much legislation. Several from the party’s left flank have also outlined objections to the Senate immigration deal, which has not yet formally been released.
“I’d have a very hard time voting for it,” Democratic Representative Ro Khanna said.
(Reporting by David Morgan and Andy Sullivan; Additional reporting by Richard Cowan and Kat Johnson; Editing by Scott Malone and Mark Porter)
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