Front Burner - Why did Trump tank a border bill Republicans fought for?

Episode Date: February 8, 2024

On Wednesday, the U.S. Senate was set to vote on a sweeping national defense bill. It included reforms to immigration, in reaction to a surge in migration across the U-S southern border. It also included military support for the war in Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. It came together through months of bipartisan meetings. But the vote failed. Why? The CBC’s Alex Panetta is here with the answers. He’s a reporter with our bureau in Washington D.C. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Damon Fairless. In the United States, four months of painstaking negotiations between Republicans and Democrats have just come apart at the seams. The American people are going to know that the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump. Is Donald Trump calling the shots here, Mr. Speaker?

He's not calling the shots. I am calling the shots for the House. On Wednesday, the U.S. Senate was set to vote on a sweeping national defense bill. It included reforms to immigration in reaction to a surge in migration, particularly across the southern border. But it also included military support for the war in Ukraine, as well as for Israel and Taiwan. And it came together through months of bipartisan meetings. But the vote failed. Why? Well, in a word, politics.

Had a popular commentator that told me flat out, if you try to move a bill that solves the border crisis during this presidential year, I will do whatever I can to destroy you. So how did we get to a place where partisan arguments over the Mexican border could affect the war in Ukraine? And with border tensions already high in states like Texas, what happens now that this attempt at cooperation has fallen apart? My guest today is Alex Bonetta. He's a reporter with CBC in our Washington bureau, and he's going to tell us about it. Alex, it's great to have you back on. Thanks for coming on.

Good to be here. All right. I want to get to the actual bill we'll be talking about in a minute, but there's a lot of backstory. It's complicated. So let's start with the border right now. Migration numbers in the states are way up. How's that sitting with American politicians? filled with migrants to the north. Well, that drew attention to the fact that this is straining resources in northern cities, in New York City. There's a migrant camp there, a hotel filled with migrants.

The mayor of New York is saying that it's destroying the city budget. I don't see an ending to this. I don't see an ending to this. This issue will destroy New York City. Destroy New York City. Destroy New York City. Every service in this city is going to be impacted. So yeah, it's definitely causing a lot of tension around the country,

and it's not limited to the southern states. So then, you know, things have been flaring up in Texas, right? This has been going on for a few weeks. It's been getting, you know, world attention, actually. In your piece, which you've written, you said that this is a cold civil war that's looming. What do you mean by that? What's going on at the border? It's a spectacular tension between the federal government and a state on the verge of what you might call a constitutional crisis.

So a few months ago, authorities in Texas erected razor wire at the southern border along the Rio Grande to keep people from entering. United States government said, no, I'm sorry, you can't do that. You're a state government. You don't get to decide what to do at our national border. Exactly. You don't police the border. Just like, you know, we don't run, you know, state schools, right? And this issue got fought to the Supreme Court.

Supreme Court said the United States government has the right to tear down this razor wire, which it has not done. Texas has said it's going to ignore the Supreme Court ruling. Now, Supreme Court ruling doesn't really ask Texas to do anything. So for now, it's kind of moot. It'll probably be fought again up to the Supreme Court about what Texas's obligations are. However, the choice of language that Texas has employed in the wake of that Supreme Court decision and the language of other states, conservative states supporting Texas, is reminiscent of some of the language you heard in the 1850s and the early 1860s in the lead up to the Civil War, talking about a broken compact between Washington and the states. to send a loud and clear message that we are banding together to fight to ensure that we will be able to maintain our constitutional guarantee that states will be able to defend against any type of imminent danger or invasion. It's extremely tense and right now you're seeing these two orders of government on a collision course.

Let's talk about how much immigration is shot up by. I mean, the numbers are significant. Can you just kind of give me a lay of the land there? Absolutely. There are historic numbers of what you call encounters. Now, an encounter could be anything from somebody forgetting their passport at home and trying to cross to somebody trying to walk over illegally. All right. It's basically people stopped at the border for whatever reason.

The numbers reached 3.2 million last year. I mean, that's like six times higher than the numbers a decade ago. Right. Historic numbers. It was like 500,000 or so, right? Exactly. And that's huge. And it's driven by a whole range of factors, some of them global factors and some of them national ones. And so the global factors, we know that there's more migration now than any time since the Second World War around the world, driven by, you know, climate catastrophe, you know, civil wars, crumbling governments, all these different issues are driving people to move in large numbers. Well, that's obviously happening throughout Latin America as well, and not just Latin America, because, you know, I've interviewed Russian migrants at the Mexico-Arizona

border, Chinese migrants as well. There are people from all over the world coming through Latin America into the United States. Then there are the domestic factors at play. And frankly, the United States does not have the resources to detain and or deport all the migrants who arrive as they arrive. It has to deal with people on a case-by-case basis. A lot of them make asylum claims. Once you step foot on U.S. soil, you make this claim, and the United States government, again, it doesn't have enough beds, doesn't have enough planes,

doesn't have enough immigration judges to deal with everyone quickly. So then you end up with a large number of that 3.2 million, I think a slight majority, but it's not entirely clear how many, wind up staying inside the country while they fight for a certain status

or fight an asylum claim, for instance. And that's the source of a lot of tension within the country is, you know, millions of people per year getting to stay when they might not ultimately be entitled to. What changes has Biden made since taking over in 2020? I mean, the Republicans count 64 measures he took that expanded migration. And definitely in his first days in office, I mean, the Republicans count 64 measures he took that expanded migration. And definitely in his first days in office, I mean, he rolled back a number of Trump era policies, including he halted construction of the Mexico border wall. He restored refugee acceptance levels. Trump basically froze refugee acceptance at a historic low. Biden restored that. Biden ended a pandemic pause on processing immigration papers. He scrapped the so-called Muslim ban. He expanded the use of what's called immigration parole, basically giving

people permission to stay in the country temporarily while they apply for admission. You know, people who denigrate it call it catch and release. He's also granted temporary stays to certain people who come from certain unstable countries. The Republican position on this seems to be that, you know, is saying essentially that Biden's flung the doors open. Is that accurate? I think it's unfair to say he's flung open the doors because deportations are way up now. The Biden folks argue that they deport a larger percentage of migrants than Trump did. But certainly, I mean, it's increased exponentially since Biden took office, not quite to their highest levels under Trump.

But, yeah, I mean, the argument that Biden and his supporters are going to make is the United States cannot deport everyone. Again, we don't have the resources to deport everyone. We don't have the facilities to detain everyone. Some people are going to get in. And it takes, again, it takes like up to seven, eight years to argue some asylum cases. You can't lock people in non-existent facilities for seven years. The facilities aren't there. The deportation flights aren't there. You know, we're doing can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem.

Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to,

50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Okay, so let's get into the bill.

It's a big bill. There's a ton of disparate stuff packed into it. But I want to talk about what we've been talking about, migration. What's it proposing specifically in terms of immigration and border security? Well, it does a lot of stuff. It restricts which migrants can be released into the U.S. It makes it harder to seek asylum. It sets a higher standard.

It speeds up the asylum process so applicants don't linger for years and years in the country while they're fighting their asylum case. It adds resources for detention and deportation. It quickens expulsions. There's even, I mean, the most important provision in there, there's a so-called border shutdown provision. If the U.S. starts getting more than 5,000 migrants a day, the president is forced to halt migrant processing entirely, basically shut down the border. If that bill were the law today, I'd shut down the border right now and fix it quickly. And it's currently getting more than that, though, right? Like, it tends to get more than 5,000 a day, if I understand. Yeah, so right now, if this bill were in effect, the President of the United States

would have the authority, or actually would be forced to, according to the bill, basically say no one's coming in anymore. Now, there are loopholes in there, and this gets to Republicans' complaints about the bill. They say, well, there's a loophole that says the president can override the shutdown provision if he deems it a matter of national interest, and he could override it for 45 days. There are other things that Republicans don't like in there. Money for NGOs, the same NGOs that help migrants travel around the country, that provide services to migrants. And, you know, so basically Republicans are now just disparaging the bill, saying it's not good enough.

Now, this was a, you know, a bill that came through months of negotiations. You say, you know, it's not a Republican dream bill by any means. But it sounds like it's not a dream bill for either side, right? Like it sounds like neither side was really going to get what they want out of it. Is that fair? This is American policymaking the way it was designed to be. I mean, the founders of this country created a political system with two chambers, one that has elections all the time, another one that has elections more infrequently, that's less political, and you're supposed to compromise, right? And what this bill is, is essentially a compromise between what Republicans wanted, which is an all enforcement bill, basically just,

you know, detain, deport and what Democrats wanted, which is, you know, some more humanitarian migration. It allows up to 50,000 more immigration slots per year, but it's definitely not a democratic dream, dream bill either. Like there's literally nothing that progressives had been asking for in terms of asylum. This is what Democrats have wanted for years and years now, which is fine. Okay, we'll do a little bit more border security. We'll give Republicans what they want. But what we want is some sort of status for the 10, 15 million people here who've been undocumented for years. There is zero about that in this bill. Democrats got nothing of what progressives had been undocumented for years. There is zero about that in this bill. Democrats got nothing of what progressives had been asking for.

Again, it was a compromise and Republicans got a lot of what they wanted. So let's talk about the Republicans and specifically let's talk about Donald Trump right now and his role in this. So he's not the Republican nominee yet, but he's definitely the frontrunner. He's been urging Republicans not to support the bill because he says it's bad for Republicans, it's a win for Biden. But like you just mentioned, it's got a lot of stuff that, you know, you would think the Republicans would get behind. So I guess I'm curious, what's Trump's angle? Why is he pushing against this? Yeah.

And let's pause before getting to Trump. This bill is supported by a number of Republicans in the Senate. Well, the Republicans in the Senate negotiated it. It's supported by the Republican supporting Border Patrol Union, by the Republican editorial page of the Wall negotiated it. It's supported by the Republican-supporting Border Patrol Union, by the Republican editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, and now suddenly Republicans have basically killed a bill that they themselves negotiated. And what's happening is Trump leaned on his party, particularly in the House of Representatives, right,

which is more frequent elections. It's a lot more populist, more conservative, and it's controlled by Republicans, right, unlike the Senate. And basically Trump has told them you better kill this bill. This is a Democrat trap. It's a trap for Republicans that would be so stupid, so foolish to sign a bill like this. This bill can't be signed. And it's not only that, it's massive amounts of money going out of town, as we say, going out of town, billions and billions. And what people have been telling reporters is that Trump is telling them, you better kill this bill. Don't give Joe Biden a win in an election year. Right. Now, he hasn't said that explicitly publicly, but some Republicans have. They've said, we don't want to help Joe Biden's approval

ratings in an election year. So it's a fascinating dynamic where basically the electoral politics, you know, takes precedent over, you know, sound public policy. And so then the House of Representatives says, OK, we're going to kill the bill when it gets to our house. And then the Senate, which had designed the bill and presumably this thing, if I mean, if it were a secret vote, I probably you would probably get 85 of 100 votes in the Senate. But then Republicans started bailing on it, too, because they say, well, we're not going to go in and kill ourselves with our own base. You know, we're not going to defenestrate ourselves within our party in order to pass something that's never going to become law in the House. So they basically abandoned it, too. And it all started with pressure from Donald Trump.

And so that's them falling in line. Absolutely. I mentioned this bill's got a lot of stuff packed into it. That's border security and immigration. Let's talk about some of the other stuff. But I want to know, I guess, before we get there, what's the reasoning behind packing in a lot of different items in this one, Bill? Yeah, so let's back up about four or five months. It's late 2023.

Ukraine is starting to run low on ammunition, artillery in particular. And a large part of its self-defense has been funded by the United States. What the U.S. has done is spent tens of billions of dollars buying up new weapons, new ammunition in particular. That ammunition stays in the United States. The Department of Defense gets to use it to replenish American weapons stocks. But old American weapons, old American munitions go to Ukraine. Right. It's getting hand-me-downs. Exactly.

And Ukraine's managed to not only hold off Russian, since the spring of 2022, it's actually, you know, regained some territory. Well, those stockpiles are running out and the politics in the United States has changed. Republicans are starting to turn against supporting Ukraine, again, partly under pressure from Trump. Ukraine's an interesting case. People always want to know my feeling. Number one, we're in for 200 billion plus, and the European nations are in for 20 billion. All we have to do is say pay. Nobody ever says to them pay. You don't even hear that. I say pay.

And from the populist right, the nationalist right, not to mention there are some fans of Russia and critics of Ukraine within the Republican Party as well. So basically this pressure is growing. And so what Republicans start to do is they take up this line. People like Jim Jordan, Mike Johnson, now the Speaker, start saying, it is preposterous that we are funding the defense of Ukraine's borders while our border is wide open. Why aren't we defending our own border? Or we even talk about Ukraine. I'm going to tell the President, when I'm telling all of you, and we've told the American people, border, border, border. We have to take care of our own house. We have to secure our own border before we talk about doing anything else.

And October 7th happens in Israel, the attack in Israel. And Joe Biden goes on national TV in a primetime speech from the Oval Office and says, fine, let's put it all together. American values are what make us a partner that other nations want to work with. To put all that at risk if we walk away from Ukraine, if we turn our backs on Israel, it's just not worth it. That's why tomorrow I'm going to send to Congress an urgent budget request to fund America's national security needs, to support our critical partners, including Israel and Ukraine. Let's put together this national security package that funds Ukraine, that funds Israel, things like the Iron Dome and its munitions, funds Taiwan as it defends itself from a potential

Chinese invasion, and will also upgrade our border security here in the United States. And then these negotiations start, and it takes like four months to negotiate a bill. So, you know, just to sum up, this bill is basically, kind of think of a big scale, right? On one end, you've got what the Democrats want. They're talking about, you know, arming Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan. And then on the other side, there's what the Republicans ostensibly want, which is tighter border security and tighter immigration policy. They spend months balancing that. And so that balance, does it initially look like it makes that bill more palatable to everyone?

That was the goal. I mean, in traditional American policymaking, the idea is I give you a bit of what you need, you give me a bit of what I need, we get it through both chambers. Instead, what appears to have happened here is opponents of each individual measure have begun to pick apart the bill, and it is turning into the most spectacular legislative collapse I've covered in years. A truly phenomenal flame out for something that probably has a significant degree of support across the country. Well, I mean, you mentioned some of that reaction, but take me into that. What are you hearing from politicians? What are politicians saying about this, the collapse of this bill? Yeah, the people who worked on this

bill for months are furious. I mean, we heard from the lead Democratic negotiator who said, you know, one of his colleagues had told him this was the most dispiriting week he had ever spent in the United States Congress. Just watching American policymakers fail to do anything, including when they have consensus on stuff and when there's a national consensus for action in some areas. A group of us spent four months working every day through the holidays, through the weekends to satisfy the demands that Republicans made. And within 24 hours of unveiling that agreement, they abandoned bipartisan border reform and Ukraine for one reason. It was Donald Trump asked them. The lead Republican negotiator, Jim Lankford of Oklahoma, joked that it felt like he'd been

thrown under the bus by his Republican colleagues and then the bus had been backed over him. So they're not happy. I understand this is not everything that everyone wants for every single proposal on it, but it's the single most significant shift that we'd have in border policy in decades. We're hearing from, you know, Democrats who attended a Pentagon briefing on what happens to Ukraine, for instance, if nothing is done here. And they're talking about, you know, Ukraine is going to get pummeled by Russian ammunition starting this spring and is going to have a very hard time defending itself. And then, you know, the fear is you'll start to see Russian advances, you know, war crimes, more refugees, the pounding of export infrastructure, which, you know, including infrastructure to export grain. What does that do to world food

prices? And she's saying this is just a devastating collapse of American prestige. One Democrat we heard from this week that, you know, the United States had been backing an ally and just sort of pulled the rug out from under it when the political, the domestic politics got a bit tough. So here we are. It's Wednesday afternoon when you and I are talking. The voting is literally either getting underway or underway right now. On this vote, the yeas are 49, the nays are 50. Three-fifths of the senators duly chosen and sworn not having voted in the affirmative. The motion is not agreed to.

So what happens now? Is there anything that can be salvaged? What are you expecting to come out of this? So what it looks like Democrats intend to do next, Democratic leadership, with some support from Republicans, by the way, is to just split the bill up. Just take out the foreign policy stuff and force a vote on that, on Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. The thinking is you could get a pretty strong consensus, not unanimous support in the Senate, but strong support to advance the Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan stuff, get it back to the House and hope that it comes up for a vote in the House. And that's by no means certain.

Is it fair to say we think that the border stuff is dead in the water? Yeah, I think it's like Charlie Brown's football. You know, border and migration reform, or, you know, the sideshow Bob and the Rake from The Simpsons, where it's like, you know, you step on a rake, hits you in the face. Step on the rake again a couple years later, hits you in the face. Well, that's the American migration and border debate. It just it constantly dies because it's exhibit a of the growing dynamic in American politics where it's safer not to do anything. It's safer to posture against your opponent than to actually try and do something, because then you risk getting primaried and you face the wrath of Fox News and Donald Trump. You're just better off doing nothing.

And so I think the border stuff is dead for now, at least. And then the international affairs stuff gets to the House. And then the $64,000 question is, will Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican, risk his speakership by putting a Ukraine bill on the floor? And if he does put it on the floor, does he get ousted as Speaker? If he doesn't put it on the floor, will they find a majority to do what's called a discharge petition, which is you basically get signatories from both parties. You get a majority of the House to force a vote on an issue. This thing is rarely used. It's almost never successful for a variety of reasons. I think it's only been used successfully twice in the last two decades. But you could see a group of Democrats and a group

of Republicans banding together to force a vote on Ukraine, Taiwan, Israel in the House of Representatives. And that would happen in about a month. It takes like 30 calendar days before you can do this. All right, Alex, thanks so much. Really appreciate it. Thank you. I just really appreciate it. Thank you. All right, that's it for today. I'm Damon Fairless. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner.

I'll talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.