WASHINGTON (CN) — Top Senate lawmakers said Tuesday that a final deal remains elusive on a multibillion-dollar package of funding aimed at addressing border security concerns and propping up U.S. allies abroad.
The upper chamber is seeking bipartisan consensus on the supplemental budget measure, based on a roughly $100 million funding request from President Biden. Democrats had hoped to bring the White House version of the bill to the floor late last year, but disagreements over the package’s border policies stalled things until after the holidays.
In addition to expanded funding for border security measures — a top Republican priority — the proposed supplemental would also include foreign aid authorizations for Ukraine and Israel.
While the Senate has yet to release the text of a possible deal, lawmakers signaled over the weekend that the details of the supplemental bill could be published as soon as this week.
Although lawmakers are “close to reaching a bipartisan agreement,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said during remarks on the Senate floor Tuesday morning, the bill is “not there yet.”
Democrats are “serious” about border security, the New York senator said, adding that the White House has expressed willingness to reach across the aisle “in a big way” and work with Republicans on the issue. But, Schumer added, lawmakers must draft the proposed legislation on a bipartisan basis.
“All of us want to reach an agreement,” he said, “but we want to get this right.”
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin concurred, saying that he hoped to continue working with Republicans “in good faith” and said that any deal must be reached “in an orderly fashion.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell placed border security on equal footing with foreign aid during his own floor remarks Tuesday.
“We need to restore security and order at our southern border,” the Kentucky Republican said, adding that the U.S. should also aid in the fight against Russian aggression in Ukraine and Israel’s fight against Hamas.
Schumer, meanwhile, accused some Republicans who he branded as “hard right saboteurs” of working to sink negotiations on the supplemental package.
“Many of them are motivated by naked partisanship,” the majority leader said. “Others are taking cues from Donald Trump.”
Some Republican lawmakers, especially in the House, have bristled at the proposed Senate deal.
Texas Representative Chip Roy, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, has been vocally critical of negotiations, saying that what he’s seen of the supplemental measure “doesn’t do the job.”
“It’s not about just restoring Trump policies,” Roy said Friday on Fox News. “We actually need to force existing law and make sure the law is clear so that it cannot be violated like it’s currently being violated.”
Roy and other congressional Republicans have pointed to border legislation passed last year in the GOP-controlled House as an alternative to any possible Senate compromise.
The House’s border bill is “THE deal that has ACTUAL border security policies,” Roy wrote in a Tuesday post on X, formerly Twitter.
“The House already passed it,” he said, “now it’s the Senate’s turn.”
It’s unclear whether Republican complaints about Senate border negotiations will be enough to put any consensus legislation in jeopardy in the upper chamber, but Schumer urged his colleagues to ignore the noise regardless.
“[B]oth sides have an obligation to ensure that these hard right voices stay in the minority,” the top Senate Democrat said.
Meanwhile, lawmakers in the lower chamber are amping pressure on House Speaker Mike Johnson to oppose the Senate border legislation if it lands on his desk. Former President Donald Trump has also joined in urging Johnson to split on the proposed supplemental, writing in a post last week on Truth Social that the House speaker should only accept a “PERFECT” border bill.
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