President Joe Biden is blaming former President Donald Trump for persuading Republican senators to not back bipartisan border security legislation agreed upon last weekend.
But there was a higher priority than Trump the senators were listening to – their constituents alarmed by the crisis at the southern border, Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., told Newsmax on Tuesday.
“Millions of people across the country are telling us what to do,” Braun told “Rob Schmitt Tonight.” “That idea that [Trump] has been leaning in on senators and representatives, you don’t need to do that. It is clear if you’re reading the pulse politically of your own constituents, you do exactly what Trump did say, don’t vote for it. This is typical, and you can relate it to what happened with the ‘sugar high’ economy that they created, borrowed, and spent all that money and then bragged about bringing debt down.
“We laid off people, bragged about bringing unemployment down. It’s the same approach. In this case, it’s even more blatant because the legislative template that Trump had to work with is exactly the same one that Biden has. Of course, he’s undone everything that Trump had in place, and this would be the dumbest thing to do because it baselines it instead of 500 to 1,000 a day that was working pre-Biden, it would take it up the levels that are crazy. And if we accept that, yes, you deserve to lose your job.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., conceded earlier Tuesday the border security bill unlikely will become law. Biden even conceded it is unlikely to come to the Senate floor before blaming Trump. Braun said “The Rule of 41” came into play, where 41 senators can kill any legislation because it takes 60 to break a filibuster.
Braun, who is not seeking reelection this year to campaign to be Indiana’s governor, said the legislation, which devotes $20 billion to border security with $60 billion in aid to Ukraine, $14 billion for Israel, and billions for the Indo-Pacific region, including Taiwan, is nowhere close to the Secure the Border Act (H.R.2) passed by the House in May but has been languishing in the Senate.
“When you look at the essence of the bill, it was nowhere close to H.R.2, which has been sitting over here in the Senate for months, so it was bound to fall apart,” Braun said. “They didn’t want to give up. It fell apart literally in this last day because we will have 41 Republicans that will say, we’re not going to advance the bill. We need to do that more often.”
