I have been saying since June that any aid package passed by Congress for Ukraine would be tied to changes in the American policy on our southern border. I doubled down on that after the terror attack on Israel by Hamas. A deal seemed to be a certainty, but President Biden waited too long to make it, and now politics will make it much more difficult.
While Ukrainians fend off hundreds of missiles with diminishing ammunition supplies aimed at civilian homes and gathering places, the Biden Administration is preparing to launch a second installment of the President’s “Gates of Hell Speech.” On January 6, the third anniversary of the riot at the U.S. Capitol, Biden intends to launch a highly vitriolic speech aimed at labeling all Republican elected officials as MAGA candidates who are opposed to democracy.
It doesn’t take an expert in Congress to figure out that this is not going to enhance the atmosphere for legislators to create a bipartisan agreement on aid to Ukraine and Israel. This follows the failed negotiations in December when a deal would have passed the Congress as part of the Continuing Resolution. The problem was that the Administration would not engage in the discussion until the last week Congress was in session.
Since then, the political tension has started to increase. The Iowa Caucuses are in ten days. But more importantly, a surge of uninvited immigrants continue to flood across our southern border. The numbers are absurd.
In April 2000, during President Trump’s term, and thanks to the pandemic, migrant crossings at the southern border fell to 16,182, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. That number was over 206,000 in November – a roughly 1275% increase. Most of this increase has to do with the Biden Administration abandoning the use of Title 42 that prevented migrants from entering the country.
According to the New York Times, there were 2.5 million “encounters” between immigrants and the Border Patrol. Over a million were released into the United States pending a court hearing. Of the 1.4 million new immigration cases in 2023, only 100,000 were resolved. Most of these people will never see a courtroom.
And the bottom line is that this issue helps Republicans and hurts the Democrats. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, voters trust former President Trump on the border by a better than two-to-one margin (54-24%), making it one of the Republican’s most salient issues.
As a result of the heightened political atmosphere of an election year and Biden’s anemic approval numbers (the worst of any President since modern polling began), Biden’s negotiation position on the foreign aid bill gets weaker every day. Now, instead of accepting a return to Trump’s Title 42 policy, House Republicans are likely to demand more of the provisions in the border security bill they passed earlier in the year.
This goes to the basic principle of being in the minority. If you can’t win the vote, win the issue. House Republicans are not in the minority in the House, but the Democrat Senate and the Democrat President outnumber them. When you are in the minority, your goal is to be in the majority. Immigration is an issue that hurts Joe Biden severely and makes the election of a Republican candidate for President more likely.
Second, the Senate races in 2024 are aligned against the Democrats. This is mainly because they did so well six years ago in the 2018 midterm elections. Be that as it may, when a Presidential candidate wins a state in presidential election years, so does the Senator from the same party. In 2000, the only exception was Maine, where Susan Collins won. There are no vulnerable Republican seats, and there are six or seven Democratic seats in play. And if the Republican presidential candidate wins a state, you had better believe immigration played in their favor.
Here is why the immigration issue is so bad for the Democrats. Have you ever heard anyone explain why letting millions of people across our border is a desirable thing? Can you recall a convincing argument by a significant politician describing why the current state of the border is good? No, you haven’t. You might hear, “Walls don’t work,” or “Trump put people in cages” (it was the Obama Administration that did that). There is no defense for Biden’s failure on the border. The President would be better off going on national television and saying, “Gosh, we would like to control the border, but it is so gosh darn hard.”
Getting back to Ukraine and Israel
One has to wonder if this President has any policy he is devoted to other than maximizing abortions, imposing woke policies through his cabinet, and foisting electric vehicles on average Americans. The President had the opportunity to secure his two primary foreign policy objectives – aid to Ukraine and Israel and he blew it in exchange for a policy issue that hurts him and his colleagues in the House and Senate. It just makes no sense from a policy or a political perspective. (Don’t tell John Kerry, who thinks sending billions to Iran and attending climate change conferences are our key foreign policy goals.)
One person may save the military aid package: House Speaker Mike Johnson. More of a Reagan Republican than a populist, Johnson is supportive of aid to both Ukraine and Israel. He holds a lot of cards in this negotiation, as well as the appropriations debate. Later this month, the House must pass the first nine appropriation bills. It must pass the remaining three two weeks later. If Congress fails to pass the appropriation bills, an automatic sequester for non-defense spending goes into effect under last year’s debt limit legislation.
One strategy for the Speaker would be to merge the foreign aid bills with either the maxibus or the minibus appropriation bills (I don’t make up these terms; click here for an explanation). This strategy would make the legislation a must-pass bill, allowing the Republicans to put some significant priorities into the bill.
Speaker Johnson, and everyone else who supports Ukraine aid, have a problem. There are many Republicans who oppose Ukraine aid, even with concessions on the border, who will not be highly motivated to pass anything. Don’t be surprised to see Matt Gaetz threatening a motion to vacate the chair because, well, because he is a jerk.
Presidents and Congress
For a President to be successful, he often must work with a Congress where the opposite party is in charge. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush never had a Republican House. Yet they managed significant policy accomplishments, and Reagan won one of the most giant landslides in history in 1984. Bill Clinton had a Republican Congress for six years, got a major Welfare Reform bill passed, and passed three balanced budgets in a row. They did it by sharing credit with the other party. Reagan had a sign on his desk in the Oval Office that said, “There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.”
Foreign policy is one of those areas where the nation’s interests should transcend politics. The cause of Israel is just. Imagine how we would react if someone came into our country and butchered, raped, and tortured 50,000 women, children, and older people. That is the numerical equivalent of what that attack would have been on a country our size. Israel has the right to make sure Hamas is never capable of striking them again.
Ukraine is now hanging by a thread as Western resources dry up. Meanwhile, Putin, the Stalin-wannabe dictator of Russia, is importing tons of ammunition from North Korea and sending it into civilian areas of Ukraine. Do we stand for freedom or not? As I wrote before (in Ronald Reagan’s voice): “Ukraine’s struggle for sovereignty and self-determination resonates with our own history. We know what it means to fight for freedom, to stand against tyranny, and to forge a future determined by the will of the people. When we support Ukraine, we are not just offering assistance but upholding the principles that have guided our nation since its birth.”
Unfortunately, the people around President Biden have decided they cannot win based on his record, but only by vilifying their hoped-for opponent, Donald Trump. In truth, they are so wedded to this strategy that they would be, to use a political term-of-art, wholly screwed if the Republicans somehow nominated Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley. The entire year, starting tomorrow will be to run the most negative campaign in history, questioning the patriotism and commitment to democracy of every Republican running for office. And that is going to make it extremely difficult to stand for freedom and sovereignty for Ukraine and Israel. And mark my words; that weakness will haunt our future.
Biden's very ill-advised "speech," to the extent he can deliver one cogently and coherently, is a desperate attempt to resurrect J6 as a political issue and rally his base. It will be ignored outside of the delusional bubble of MSNBC. He would be better served, if he were capable, of trying to rally public support for both Ukraine and Israel, slapping down antisemitic protesters in a much-needed "Sister Soulja" moment. Sadly, he is too infirm to do that. And yes, Matt Gaetz is a jerk.
Great piece Mark. Seventy-four percent of Americans, including 54% of Democrats, want more security at the border according to a recent NBC poll. Two-thirds of Americans thing the GOP is doing the right thing by holding up Ukraine aid until measures to increase border security happen. This should be a lay-up for the Dems to vote for.