As I've explained at length of late, Senate negotiators have been working for nearly two months on a series of border reforms in exchange for $61 billion the White House is seeking for Ukraine war funding.
That's what I attempted to do last week, when I explained that none of the proposals in that Senate effort as reported would do anything to address the current disaster at the Southwest border.
Giving up on a border security bill would be a self-inflicted GOP wound.
The popular opinion is that the Lankford-Sinema-Murphy proposal is in the can and ready to go to the floor for a vote, with ABC News reporting on January 29, "Senate negotiators are racing to put the finishing touches" on it, a day after CBS News claimed that "Biden and senators on verge of striking immigration deal aimed at clamping down on illegal border crossings".
Independent U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema said on Wednesday that Senate negotiators were "Closing in" on a bipartisan border security deal, which Congress could couple with new emergency aid for Ukraine and Israel.
If by some accident it actually does fix the border, she can draw support from conservatives and cut into Gallego's slight lead. For Lankford and his fellow Republicans there are only three outcomes, and none are great politically: the bill goes nowhere and GOP "Cynicism" is blamed; the bill fails to make the border any better and they get blamed for getting whipsawed by Biden and the Democrats; or the bill actually makes the border better, and Biden claims credit for solving a problem he created.
If you hear snippets of what's coming out of the Senate border negotiations and feel like you and your country are being taken for a ride, that's because you're either a cynic or being set up as the mark in a White House political con.
https://cis.org/Arthur/Convoluted-Politics-Senate-Border-Bill
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