3 months ago
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Speaker Mike Johnson is delivering his most clear warning yet to senators negotiating a border deal, saying in a letter Friday that it could be “dead on arrival” in the House.
“I wanted to provide a brief update regarding the supplemental and the border, since the Senate appears unable to reach any agreement. If the rumors about the contents of the draft proposal are true, it would have been dead on arrival in the House anyway,” Johnson wrote in the letter to his colleagues, a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO.
Johnson didn’t explicitly rule out taking up a Senate bill, as the bipartisan group of negotiators hope to unveil text next week. But he repeated a point he’s made frequently in recent weeks: if House Republicans don’t feel like it goes far enough to crackdown on the border, it won’t go anywhere in the chamber.
“I am emphasizing again today that House Republicans will vigorously oppose any new policy proposal from the White House or Senate that would further incentivize illegal aliens to break our laws,” Johnson wrote.
Senators left town this week without a long-awaited agreement, which is expected to link new border funding to aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. But Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and James Lankford (R-Okla.), who are negotiating the deal along with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), said they expect to release the text of the bill early next week.
