Nancy Pelosi tried to pull a fast one but Mitch McConnell stopped her in her tracks. The crisis at the border demands immediate attention from Congress and all they do is play games.
Both Houses took up separate bills. The GOP’s passed the Senate with a bipartisan majority 84-8 vote. The House bill was by party lines. Needless to say, Nancy Pelosi will lose this fight so she needs to vote on the GOP’s bill now.
The Washington Examiner reported that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rejected the latest House border funding bill because it claws back funding for efforts to deter illegal immigration.
“It’s not going to happen,” the Kentucky Republican announced on Thursday.
The new House bill would eliminate funding in the Senate bill allocated for the use of the military to help secure the southern border and it strips out additional funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is an interior immigration enforcement agency that the Democrats want to eliminate.
“If House Democrats send the Senate some partisan effort to disrupt our bipartisan progress, we will simply move to table it,” Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor.
“The United States Senate is not going to pass a border funding bill that cuts the money for ICE and the Department of Defense.”
On Wednesday, the Senate passed a $4.6 billion bipartisan border funding bill in an 84-8 vote, which increased pressure on Nancy Pelosi to take up that bill.
Nancy Pelosi is also under a lot of pressure from her progressive wing to maintain provisions that block the President from reducing illegal immigration or deporting illegals through ICE or the military.
On Thursday, Pelosi called for the Trump administration and the Senate to engage in an immediate conference to do the best we can for the children before we leave for the 4th of July.
Mitch McConnell urged Nancy Pelosi to take up the Senate bill. He said some of the additional funding in the House bill “may be unobjectionable things the Trump administration may be able to help secure for them administratively.”
But McConnell rejected the cuts to military and ICE proposed in the latest House version. He said the Senate-passed bill “is the only game in town,” and urged House Democrats “to quit playing games,” and pass the Senate bill.
