President Trump pooh-poohed the latest bipartisan immigration deal, set to be introduced in the Senate Monday, as government funding runs out again on Friday and DACA expires in exactly a month.
‘Any deal on DACA that does not include STRONG border security and the desperately needed WALL is a total waste of time,’ Trump tweeted Monday morning. ‘March 5th is rapidly approaching and the Dems seem not to care about DACA. Make a deal!’
Sens. John McCain, an Arizona Republican and Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, are rolling out legislation that provides a pathway to citizenship for the so-called ‘Dreamers,’ while also ordering a study, which would look at what measures are needed to secure the southern border.
Additionally this week, lawmakers are putting together another stop-gap, as a longer-term funding bill is being written, news that disappointed the White House too.
‘Moving from stop-gap measure to stop-gap measure is no way to govern,’ Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah told reporters riding Air Force One Monday to Ohio with the president. ‘We’re disappointed in Congress that we’re potentially facing something like that.’
President Trump, seen leaving the Oval Office on Monday, isn’t thrilled with the latest immigration proposal to come out of the Senate as two important deadlines loom
President Trump dismissed the latest bipartisan effort on immigration to come out of Capitol Hill, a Senate bill sponsored by Sen. John McCain and Sen. Chris Coons
The latest bipartisan bill on immigration was sponsored by Democratic Sen. Chris Coons (left) of Delaware and Republican Sen. John McCain (right) of Arizona
‘We also extend this message to Democrats, which is that last time we got to the brink, they chose to, you know, kind of prefer the interests of people who are here illegally over people here lawfully and the government they depend on, including the military, vulnerable children, border patrol agents and federal workers,’ Shah continued.
‘We hope they don’t make that decision again,’ the deputy press secretary added.
And so the ‘Dreamers’-heavy bill, which doesn’t provide funding for the actual border wall, is not capturing the White House’s interest.
A White House official told CNN that it takes ‘a lot of effort’ to write up a bill that’s worse than its bipartisan predecessor, a deal etched out by Sens. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, and Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, but ‘this one is worse.’
Last month, Trump administration officials outlined four pillars for which a successful immigration deal would need to stand on.
First, a fix for DACA – the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program – an Obama-era policy that provided undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children, the ‘Dreamers,’ a legal way to stay.
On September 5, Trump’s Justice Department ended the DACA program and gave Congress six months to provide a fix.
And as Trump pointed out this morning, March 5 is ‘rapidly approaching.’
Trump said he would grant a pathway to citizenship to 1.8 million illegal immigrants who arrived in the U.S. in their youth – which the president says was ‘generous’ because it would go beyond the people who were eligible for DACA – in return for the $25 billion he requested for his border wall and for border security.
The White House also wants chain migration contained to just the nuclear families of green card holders and wants to end the visa lottery program.
The McCain-Coons bill’s contents fall short on that, but what the legislation does have going for it is a near identical bill in the House that has bipartisan support.
That legislation, sponsored by Reps. Will Hurd, a Republican from Texas, and Pete Aguilar, a Democrat from California, is supported by 27 Republicans and 27 Democrats.
In a statement released by his office Monday, McCain is clear about his priorities, explaining that he wants to get these immigration items off the table so that Congress can come up with a longer-term budget solution to fund the troops.
‘For months, I have been calling on my colleagues to complete a bipartisan budget agreement to lift the caps on defense spending and fully fund the military,’ McCain, a Vietnam War veteran, explained.
‘While reaching a deal cannot come soon enough for America’s service members, the current political reality demands bipartisan cooperation to address the impending expiration of the DACA program and secure the southern border,’ he added.
At last week’s GOP retreat, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota had mentioned that a two-prong solution – dealing with DACA and the border – ‘may be the best we can hope for.’
But Rep. Mark Meadows, the chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, immediately rejected that.
‘To suggest that we’re going to give, in my mind, a clean DACA for a few billion dollars, that will not really secure our border is a non-starter,’ Meadows told reporters at the West Virginia retreat.
Last month, lawmakers’ inability to etch out an immigration deal led to a three-day government shutdown, with Democrats blaming Trump for the breakdown and Republicans shaming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for the mess.
The next government funding deadline is 12:01 a.m. Friday.
With another government shutdown looking politically poisonous for both parties, lawmakers will likely sign off on yet another short-term bill on February 8.