WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats failed to advance a bipartisan border security bill Thursday, with nearly every Republican voting to filibuster it, as Donald Trump uses border chaos as the centerpiece of his campaign against President Joe Biden.
The vote was 43 to 50, which was not enough to pass with the 60 votes needed to advance. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was the only Republican senator to vote in favor of the bill on Thursday, while six Democrats joined the remaining Republican senators in voting to block it.
The vote caps a strange series of events after Senate Republican leaders pushed for a border security deal last year and signed a compromise bill before killing it. Democrats, wary of their political vulnerability when it comes to migration, had heeded a variety of demands from the Republican Party to raise the bar for asylum seekers and tighten border controls. Trump pressured Republican lawmakers to kill any deal that wasn’t “perfect,” and he succeeded.
Although the vote was expected to end in failure, it was brought forward to signal to Republicans that they would oppose the bipartisan compromise.
“Trump told his MAGA allies to stamp out the issue so he could exploit the issue during the campaign,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters after the vote. “And Senate Republicans blindly and loyally followed suit.”
But the vote was also a chance for politically threatened Democrats to try to show they are willing to crack down on immigration.
“This common-sense law would roll back the Biden Administration’s failed border policies by forcing the President to close the border, strengthen our asylum laws, and end catch and release. It’s shameful that Mitch McConnell and D.C. politicians would rather keep the border as a political talking point than actually solve the problem,” said Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., who faces a tough reelection fight in a red state. in a statement.
His compatriot, Republican Senator Steve Daines, is the chairman of the campaign arm that wants to win the Senate majority for the Republican Party this fall by defeating Tester and others. Daines called the vote a “political stunt” by Democrats.
The legislation was negotiated by James Lanford, R-Okla., who has appointed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to lead the talks. He made a deal with Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., who signed McConnell and Schumer. But Republicans immediately pushed back against it, causing McConnell to change his position. Initially, the border provisions were intended to be tied to funding from Ukraine and Israel, but Congress approved these aid measures separately.
The Biden-backed compromise bill is designed to reduce the number of border crossings, raise the standard for migrants to qualify for asylum and allow officials to quickly turn away those who don’t meet that standard. It would give the president the power to close the border if migration levels exceed certain thresholds. On the cusp of its release earlier this year, Lankford told NBC News it was “by far the most conservative border security bill in four decades.”
He voted against it on Thursday, as did Sinema, with Lankford calling it a stunt vote.
He said the chances of getting a border security solution this year are “pretty slim.” “Right now, no one really seems to want to have a serious conversation about it,” he said.
Even if it had passed the Senate, Republican leaders have made it clear that the bill would be dead upon arrival in the House of Representatives.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who is up for re-election this fall, claimed the bill was “designed to fail.”
“In fact, we can mathematically quantify how likely this bill is to pass the House of Representatives. And those chances are 0.00%,” Cruz said on the Senate floor. “Instead, Democrats consciously want this border crisis to continue.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said Thursday that Congress should pass the Republican Party’s more aggressive immigration bill, known as HR2, which is drafted on a partisan basis and has no Democratic support.
“After more than three years of claiming that the situation at our southern border was not a crisis as millions of illegal aliens poured in, Democrats in Congress are trying to stage an election-year campaign to cover their embrace of President Biden’s open border policies,” Johnson said. said in a statement.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries criticized Republicans for trying to “politically weaponize the issue” instead of solving the problems at the border.
“Extreme MAGA Republicans are not serious about addressing the challenges that clearly exist at the border, which is why they have exploded their own legislation,” he said. “Democrats will remain reasonable, responsible and results-oriented. …Unfortunately, it appears that the Republicans want to continue leaning on chaos, dysfunction and extremism. And if that continues, I think they will pay a price in November.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
