January 26, 2024
Statement from President Joe Biden On the Bipartisan Senate Border Security Negotiations
For too long, we all know the border’s been broken.
It’s long past time to fix it.
That’s why two months ago, I instructed my team to begin negotiations with a bipartisan group of Senators to seriously, and finally, address the border crisis. For weeks now that’s what they’ve done. Working around the clock, through the holidays, and over weekends.
Let’s be clear.
What’s been negotiated would – if passed into law – be the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we’ve ever had in our country.
It would give me, as President, a new emergency authority to shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed. And if given that authority, I would use it the day I sign the bill into law.
Further, Congress needs to finally provide the funding I requested in October to secure the border. This includes an additional 1,300 border patrol agents, 375 immigration judges, 1,600 asylum officers, and over 100 cutting-edge inspection machines to help detect and stop fentanyl at our southwest border.
Securing the border through these negotiations is a win for America.
For everyone who is demanding tougher border control, this is the way to do it.
If you’re serious about the border crisis, pass a bipartisan bill and I will sign it.
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As political gambit this is a masterful play, whether it is wise policy or otherwise. It is what President Clinton did to Republicans on a balanced budget in 1996. Then, as now, the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party was furious, begrudgingly went along with the president, and came to celebrate the political consequences: 1998 was the first midterm election since 1934 that the incumbent president's party gained seats in the House of Representatives.
There is more at stake here than there was in 1996. A balanced budget is a happy-sounding canard, but a concept that voters think they understand--"Yeah, I have to balance my household budget, yeah," says Joe Voter as he signs his home mortgage papers. It's an issue that just sounds good politically, and is discarded the minute a Republican is president.
The border issue is nearly as overblown as a balanced budget. However, the border issue has more substance going for it. We don't have the right to a balanced budget but we do have the right to admit to this country who we wish, and on our conditions. It's illegal to come into this country, or any other, without permission.It's not illegal to run a deficit either as a household or a nation.
The border issue this time around has more substance to it for it is coupled with aid to Ukraine, which Republicans also oppose. For President Biden it's win both or lose both.
The president has had this coupled, bipartisan, negotiated bill taken away from him by Trumpie for political purposes. He should take the issues back for political purposes. If he can, the president should use current law to do now what he says he would do if the new law came into effect: shut down the border. In a signing ceremony at the border.
