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Last fall, congressional Republicans said they were so desperate to deal with U.S./Mexico border policies that they took a radical step: GOP officials said that unless Democrats agreed to a series of conservative reforms, Republicans were prepared to let Russia take part of eastern Europe by force.
Democrats, left with little choice, agreed to pay the GOP’s ransom and endorsed a conservative, bipartisan compromise. As regular readers know, it was at that point when Republicans, acting at Donald Trump’s behest, killed the compromise plan they'd demanded.
But what if the bill only looked dead? Punchbowl News reported this week:
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer continues to strongly signal that he may try again to move forward on the bipartisan border agreement blocked by Republicans in February. “Well, three months later, we’re not walking away from trying to resolve the problems at the border,” Schumer said on the floor Tuesday. “We hope Republicans will change course and join us instead of just a lot of speeches, pointing lots of fingers and laying blame. Let’s get something done.”
The New York Democrat’s comments came just days after he told his members at a closed-door lunch that he was “seriously considering” attempting to resurrect the bipartisan agreement.
By all appearances, Schumer and his allies are quickly moving past the “consideration” stage. Yesterday, Sen. Chris Murphy — the lead Democratic negotiator on the bill — told NBC News, “I think we should bring this bill back up for a vote.” The Connecticut senator added, “Do Republicans just care about the border as a political wedge issue ... or do they actually want to solve the problem?”
Soon after, Murphy went to the Senate floor and reintroduced the legislation that GOP members derailed earlier this year.
This morning, Schumer touted the effort. “Tomorrow will be one hundred days since Senate Republicans blocked the strongest border security bill we have seen in a generation,” the majority leader said in prepared remarks.
“Democrats have not walked away from trying to get something done on the border,” Schumer added. “We want to work with our Republican colleagues on border security, just as we showed we were serious when we worked with them earlier this year. But our Republican colleagues must show they are ready to match their border rhetoric with real action. If Republicans are going to call the border an emergency, then they can’t suddenly kick the can down the road and say we can deal with this later.”
The original bill was coauthored by Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma and retiring independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, both of whom remain on board with their compromise agreement.
The trouble for the bill’s proponents, however, is that precisely zero Senate Republicans have changed their minds about the legislation, and with Trump’s hold over the GOP intensifying, there’s no reason to believe another vote would turn out differently.
That said, it appears increasingly likely that if Republicans want to make sure that the bipartisan border bill is dead, they’ll have to take steps to kill it more than once.