The White House statement comes after a week of frantic negotiations in the Senate.
President Joe Biden on Friday urged Congress to pass a bipartisan bill to address the immigration crisis at the nation’s southern border, saying he would shut down the border the day the bill became law.
“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,” Biden said in a statement. “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.”
Biden’s Friday evening statement resembles a ramping up in rhetoric for the administration, placing the president philosophically in the camp arguing that the border may hit a point where closure is needed. The White House’s decision to have Biden weigh in also speaks to the delicate nature of the dealmaking, and the urgency facing his administration to take action on the border — particularly during an election year, when Republicans have used the issue to rally their base.
The president is also daring Republicans to reject the deal as it faces a make-or-break moment amid GOP fissures.
Yup. I don’t think Biden wants to shut down the border, but there were many things in that deal that would be good. Additional staff to process asylum requests to speed that up is good for everyone. There’s some things in there that’s not so good, but overall it would improve things and no one could say he didn’t anything about the borderrrrr.
But it looks like Trump has sabotaged the thing. So now he can say “yeah I’d close the border but the republican congress won’t pass the bill because Trump cares more about himself than doing something about this problem.”
I think a lot of the border stuff is overblown, there’s issues, but it’s not the crisis they make it out to be. But now Biden has a way to neuter that rhetoric.
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