GOP says no Christmas deal for Ukraine, border

Senate Republicans say there’s no chance of a deal before Christmas on funding the war in Ukraine and enacting new border security reforms.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) had tentatively scheduled a vote on the package this week, but Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), the lead Republican negotiator, told reporters Monday that he doesn’t expect White House and Senate negotiators to reach an agreement in the next few days given the unresolved issues still on the table.  

“We’re clearly not going to have text complete this week to be able to have a vote to be able to pull this stuff together. We’ll keep working until we get it done,” he said. “We’re all going to be back in January on this, but it’s going to take a while to be able to finish up all the text.” 

Lankford said he doesn’t expect the bipartisan negotiating group to release a framework this week, either. 

“I don’t anticipate a document coming out and saying to everybody, ‘OK, here’s what it is.’ This is going to be a moving target,” he added.  

Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) confirmed Monday that there won’t be a deal this week.  

“We’ll work through the [Christmas] break and hopefully have something ready to vote on” in January, he said. “Obviously, we’re not getting this done this week, for sure.”  

The talks have stalled amid strong pushback from critics in both parties who have raised the alarm about the lack of transparency in the talks and the possibility that party leaders would try to jam a deal through the Senate with little review right before the holiday recess.  

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), who last week warned it would be “practically impossible” to pass a Ukraine and border security package before Christmas, on Monday pumped the brakes on the negotiations yet again. 

“Border security policy is complex. And our colleagues at the negotiating table are clear-eyed about the fact that getting this agreement right — and producing legislative text — is going to require some time,” he said.  

He blamed Democrats and the White House for “showing up late” to the negotiating table and warned that Republicans won’t waive “our responsibility to carefully negotiate and review any agreement before voting on it.”  

McConnell is coming under pressure from Senate conservatives, including Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), to hold off on agreeing to any deal with Democrats until the GOP-controlled House reconvenes in January.  

Johnson and Lee joined 13 other Republican senators in signing a letter Sunday warning that “rushed and secret negotiations with Democrats who want an open border and who caused the current crisis will not secure the border.”  

They’ve called on Senate GOP conference Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) to schedule a special GOP conference meeting the week of Jan. 8, when House lawmakers will be back in Washington, to discuss how to proceed on a border security and Ukraine funding package.  

Only 17 Republican senators — out of a total of 49 — showed up for Monday afternoon’s vote on President Biden’s nomination of Martin O’Malley to serve as Social Security commissioner.  

Schumer nonetheless tried to sound as optimistic as possible Monday, touting what he called the “significant progress” negotiators made over the weekend.  

“I urge them to keep going,” he said, advising senators that they will vote on 11 senior military promotions this week while the border security negotiations “continue off the floor.”  

The bipartisan negotiating group met again Monday evening to build on what they accomplished over the weekend. 

Some Democrats are questioning whether it makes sense for the Senate to stay in session the rest of the week now that it’s clear there won’t be a deal on Ukraine funding and border security.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said he and his colleagues will have a discussion Tuesday about whether the border security negotiations would be better served if the rest of the Senate went home early this week.  

“I think we need to have a conversation as a caucus about this,” he said. “Can we help make progress in negotiations by staying here longer this week?” 

Coons said he heard from colleagues that negotiators have made “positive, steady, meaningful progress toward resolving a deal,” but “they need more than the next three days to finish.”  

Schumer has come under pressure from Latino and liberal senators in his caucus who have warned President Biden not to agree to Trump-era border enforcement policies, such as expanded expulsion authority to deny migrants asylum screenings.  

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), who has led the criticism of the talks, said he and other advocates for immigrants’ rights are being largely kept in the dark about the proposed reforms.  

“I think there’s overwhelming, bipartisan concern that there’s [a] lack of visibility,” he told The Hill.  

The negotiators have made the most progress on raising the threshold for asylum claims, but they have yet to reach an agreement on how to reform the practice of “humanitarian parole” of migrants after they are detained by Customs and Border Protection, or whether to require migrants who travel through safe third-party countries before coming to the United States to stay in those other countries while their asylum claims process.  

Negotiators have also discussed giving Biden broader expulsion power to turn back migrants without allowing them to go through asylum screenings as well as expanded power to detain and deport migrants.  

Conservative senators are leery of any deal that would leave the enforcement of new asylum and border policy to Biden’s discretion.  

Lee wrote Sunday on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that Biden always had the authority to stop what he called the “madness” at the border and can’t be trusted to crack down on the flow of 10,000 migrants a day just because Congress gives the administration $106 billion in emergency foreign aid.  

Lankford said while negotiators have made progress, no chapter in the talks can be closed out because every issue under discussion is related.  

“When we get a section complete as far as negotiated, we get it written and then we come back and have to evaluate it: ‘Does that actually line up?’ That’s not done because the next section also connects to this one,” he explained. “We’re committed to getting it done but trying to get through all the details of what that means and how it actually integrates. It’s … challenging.”