House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told first-term Republican lawmakers that he may try to open direct negotiations with the White House on border security and immigration reform, Punchbowl News reported Friday.
Johnson floated the idea of dealing directly with President Joe Biden during a private conference call on Thursday, the outlet reported, citing multiple sources familiar with the call.
Any deal negotiated by the Democrat-controlled Senate is unlikely to pass the House, where Republicans have the majority. According to Punchbowl, the prevailing view in Johnson’s camp is that the speaker should therefore attempt to open a channel for discussions.
Johnson has been publicly saying that the Biden administration and Democrats should accept H.R. 2, which is the House GOP’s border security and immigration proposal. He has also called on Biden to stem the massive flow of illegal immigration through executive action.
The White House and Democrats have rejected the bill, with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., calling it a “non-starter” last month.
Senate negotiators have been trying to hammer out a deal on border security for weeks, working right up to the holidays, but it’s unclear if Johnson would want to negotiate border policy changes as part of a government-funding bill or national-security supplemental package.
Fresh off his two-day trip to the U.S.-Mexico border, the speaker seemed keen to push the border security issue.
In a Friday memo, Raj Shah, Johnson’s deputy chief of staff for communications, said the administration is trying to “mislead the public about Republicans’ record and position on border security funding.”
Shah said the White House “has begun to spin its disastrous record on the southwest border” by using fake numbers and “an already debunked talking point.”
He pointed to the House GOP’s record of appropriating more funds for Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement than Biden’s budget requests and said the president’s $14 billion supplemental request would do little to bolster border security.
Before cutting a deal with Schumer and the Democrats on funding levels for fiscal year 2024, Johnson is looking to slash billions in spending, according to Punchbowl.
For his part, Schumer’s goal is to get a deal done while fending off Republican efforts to cut domestic programs and keep non-defense discretionary funding levels above $772 billion, which is the Fiscal Responsibility Act-mandated level plus the side deal hammered out by Biden and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
On the other side, Johnson needs to be able to point to spending cuts that go beyond what McCarthy was able to negotiate last spring to get hardline conservatives to support any deal. According to Punchbowl, some GOP members in the House want Johnson to back out of McCarthy’s deal with Biden, which could threaten tens of billions in non-defense funding.
Johnson and Schumer have been in private talks for weeks now, Punchbowl said, and could finalize an agreement soon. Any agreement would need the support of a sizeable number of minority-party lawmakers in their respective chambers to pass, however.