In prepared remarks released this week, President Joe Biden tore into the House Republican Conference for what he characterized as “giving up on real solutions.”
He was speaking specifically after the legislative chamber’s slim GOP majority approved an impeachment of Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, but the president was also referencing Republicans’ rejection of a bipartisan Senate proposal covering immigration and the border. The Senate eventually approved a foreign aid package without border-related inclusions… and House GOP leadership quickly resumed complaining.
“Giving up on real solutions right when they are needed most in order to play politics is not what the American people expect from their leaders,” Biden said Tuesday. “Congress needs to act to give me, Secretary Mayorkas, and my administration the tools and resources needed to address the situation at the border. The House also needs to pass the Senate’s national security supplemental right away. We will continue pursuing real solutions to the challenges Americans face, and House Republicans have to decide whether to join us to solve the problem or keep playing politics with the border.”
The “supplemental” that Biden referenced is the follow-up foreign assistance deal that the Senate passed, setting up tens of billions of dollars worth of new security help for Ukraine amid an ongoing Russian invasion. Some have pointed to money used to further this aid actually going to American companies as weapons deliveries for the Eastern European nation are put together.
There was an earlier proposal from the Biden administration for $14 billion in border security funding that Republicans also effectively tanked. Biden emphasized the inclusion in those proposed funds of an expansion to border security teams’ technological capacity for stopping the dangerous drug fentanyl, which constitutes one of the real-world problems at the border, where Republicans claim without evidence an “invasion.” Impeaching Mayorkas, meanwhile, tees up an impeachment trial in the Senate, but those proceedings would almost certainly end in acquittal.
