The Senate is putting the finishing touches on a bipartisan border policy deal that would also provide aid to Ukraine. We are waiting for the text of the bill.
Without a text, no one knows what is in the bill. But that didn’t stop Donald Trump from saying it was a “bad border deal.” Of course if the border problem gets fixed, Trump can’t use it as a campaign issue in the 2024 presidential election. Do we really want to live in a country when a narcissist, drunk with power, can derail such a bipartisan effort.
Here is Michael Sean Winters at the National Catholic Reporter:
It might not have been a great policy. It was sure to fall short of the biblical injunction to welcome the stranger. But in a polarized society and fractious polity, you take your compromises where and when you can get them.
Then former President Donald Trump entered the fray, letting it be known that he did not want Congress to reach any compromise. The New York Times concluded Trump’s “vocal opposition to the emerging border compromise has all but killed the measure’s chances in a divided Congress as he puts his own hard-line immigration policies once again at the center of his presidential campaign.”
Members of Congress are never immune from partisan political considerations, still less from thoughts of political preservation. Lest we forget, that is how the system was designed to work. Our constitutional system was constructed around the idea that competing interests would frustrate concentration of power, making tyranny impossible. In the late 18th century, such thoughts made sense and the system the founders invented has served the nation well.
What the founders could not foresee, and what is unique to our time, is not that members of Congress could be pusillanimous. It is that they are so craven.
Republicans have been complaining about the crisis at the border throughout the Biden presidency. I have never shared their fears of a more expansive immigration system, but calling for the admission of fewer migrants is not, per se, an illegitimate position.
Toward the end of George W. Bush’s presidency, the two parties came close to reaching a deal on comprehensive immigration reform. In 2013, Congress was again close to striking a deal. Like all deals, those compromises had flaws. No one can seriously doubt that the situation would be much improved if they had clinched the deal.
Since then, immigration has become a cudgel for the GOP. Ever since Trump came down the escalator and launched his presidential bid in 2015, he has framed the issue in the most morally despicable way.
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you,” he told the small crowd gathered in the Trump Tower lobby. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
Since then, Trump and his allies have added a gross disregard for the rule of law to their anti-immigrant playbook.
Read the entire piece here.
I wonder if members of Congress think about representing their districts or is it all about representing Trump?
Republicans should call Trump’s bluff and see if they can support the Bill when it is finally put on paper/online. To be against something that does not yet exist is silly. The Republicans are failing to do their jobs.