During a recent interview on ABC, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg criticized the GOP disconnect amid party members complaining to high heaven about the southern border but having walked away from recent opportunities for effective, bipartisan action in that policy area.
Bipartisan agreement on prospective progress is currently the necessity because of the partisan split in federal government control. And a proposal recently voted down in the Senate by Republicans would have given the federal government new powers to close the southern border while expanding the roster of judges working on immigration cases, alongside other major shifts. The president argued that speeding up the federal government’s handling of immigration claims would have eroded potential incentives for undocumented immigration via making potential removal from the U.S. arrive much quicker.
“She’s a United States Senator. And the United States Senate right now could be acting to help secure the southern border,” Buttigieg remarked, referring to Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), who gave Republicans’ response to Biden’s recent “State of the Union” address. “As a matter of fact, they very nearly did, with negotiations that included very conservative Republicans and Democrats and had support from the White House reaching a package that frankly involved tough compromises for all sides. Something that the bases of both parties might not have loved but that would have made a real, positive difference, only for that to be killed by the chill effect that the former president put on Congressional Republicans.”
Buttigieg said that Republicans in Congress “seem to prefer that this issue remain bad so that they can attack the president over it.”
And Republicans are lying about things in the meantime. In his own response to Biden’s latest “State of the Union,” Trump accused the president of a lack of motivation and basic action around the border… although the Biden team was very prominently behind the negotiations producing that failed Senate deal.
