Senate Republicans forge ahead on border bill over Speaker Johnson’s opposition

Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) signals that a potential border bill would likely be a no-go for House Republicans are being disregarded among many in the Senate GOP.

Johnson reportedly told his members on a conference call over the weekend that the border cannot be secured without a Republican in the White House, and Saturday circulated a Fox News display laying out what it believed to be in the bill and said he would “absolutely not” accept that package.

The comments mark his clearest indication yet that an eventual border bill — which has not been finalized — will be dead-on-arrival in the House. That would likely doom Congress’s ability to pass another tranche of Ukraine aid.

Senators, however, seemingly aren’t taking Johnson’s warning at face value. According to three Senate GOP sources, Johnson backtracking on several items since taking the gavel in late October — including his initial opposition to another stopgap spending bill — is giving them hope about an eventual border bill.

“You can’t take him fully at his word,” one Senate GOP aide told The Hill, pointing to the upcoming continuing resolution, his handling of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act late last year and last week’s uncertainly about whether he would back out of a top-line spending deal he struck with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). “The Senate’s going to do its work … and hopefully make it really hard for the House to ignore.” 

Senate negotiators continued to work throughout the holiday weekend toward an agreement, which Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) told reporters last week he hopes to have secured in the coming days. 

Lankford urged those awaiting the legislation to read it before adjudicating and advised interested parties “not to believe everything you read on the internet.” He also said he’s spoken to Johnson since the weekend back-and-forth.

“The House has H.R. 2, obviously. They’ve spoken, the Senate hasn’t. We’ve got to still be able to speak,” Lankford said on Tuesday, adding that Johnson is right that a Republican president would be key in securing the border, but that there is more than enough space for legislation on the matter.

“There is a mixture of a need in change of law,” Lankford said. “It’s not as if it can only be done with executive authority.”

Whether any bipartisan Senate bill could pass muster with House Republicans has been a key question from the beginning, and Johnson’s comments could create a new hurdle.

House Republicans have loudly argued for H.R. 2, the border package that passed the lower chamber with no Democratic votes, with a number of members saying that they would only vote for the partisan proposal. 

But while Johnson’s comments have ignited that concern once again, they aren’t fully scaring off lawmakers.

“I understand the Speaker has got a very tough job and he’s got an unruly constituency of Republicans over there, but it makes no sense to me for us to do nothing when we might be able to make things better and stem the flow of humanity across the border for the next year,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told reporters. “If we don’t do anything over the next year … it seems to me that would be a mistake.”

One Senate Republican said they weren’t sure if the conference takes Johnson at his word. 

Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.), the top Democratic negotiator, added that Johnson and other Republicans shouldn’t make up their minds on an agreement “that doesn’t exist” yet. 

“Do you think the totality of what the Speaker knows about the deal is encapsulated by that screenshot? I doubt it,” Murphy added.

Republicans also note that Johnson embraced the idea of tying future Ukraine aid to a border deal.

Part of the issues, top senators argue, is that Johnson remains an unknown quantity who has minimal experience in past legislative and spending wars. They point to last week’s brief scare that he might pull out of a spending deal struck by congressional leaders.

“It’s not like you have somebody that you’ve worked through a lot of these types of battles in the past [with],” Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican, told reporters last week. 

“I think he’s very sincere and wants to get results,” Thune continued on the government funding tumult. “But he has to manage an incredibly divided caucus, and I assume at some point they’ll have to get it done in a bipartisan way because I don’t think there are people over there on our side of the aisle who will vote for anything.”

A spokesperson for the Speaker told The Hill that Johnson remains supportive of “transformative policy changes” to secure the border.

“Since taking the gavel in October, Speaker Johnson has been clear that America needs transformative policy changes to secure the southern border,” the spokesperson said. “Before he visited the border, at the border, and since leaving the border, Speaker Johnson has said we need to fix the broken parole system, reform the asylum process, reinstitute Remain in Mexico, end catch-and-release, and finish constructing the border wall. Together, these policies would stop the flow of illegal aliens and safeguard Americans.” 

“His position has not changed. The Senate must pass policies that actually secure the border,” the spokesperson added. 

Before the House can even be tested with handling a border bill, the Senate has its own hurdles to overcome. Senate negotiators are still having trouble on the issue of parole, which multiple members, including Lankford, said was the major sticking point in talks. 

Democrats have indicated they want the issue to stay untouched in talks, but GOP members are loudly saying that any deal must have changes to the parole policy in place on top of those for the asylum process that were already agreed to. 

“They’ve got to solve this parole issue,” Thune said on Tuesday. “Ninety-five percent of the people that are released into the interior of the country are done under parole. That’s got to be fixed and that’s the piece they’re working on now.”

Some members also view these negotiations as the last chance to secure any larger-scale border agreement for the foreseeable future, with a Democratic White House heavily seeking a deal and Republicans clamoring for border policy changes. 

“This is probably the last launch window for a comprehensive border security bill for most of the members who are in the Senate,” the Senate GOP member said. “I really do think it could go that long.”