No, No, No

. . . on the proposed foreign aid/immigration bill (which now seems dead).  Before getting to why, let's take a minute to set the context.

The current border chaos is a result of the Biden's administration deliberate choices on enforcement and funding, made at the beginning of the president's term.  He has the authority to reduce the chaos, and has chosen not to do so.  The degree of chaos and inability of the United States to control its own borders is evident if you follow those correspondents who spend time on the border or if you live in a border state, as I do, and see it yourself. 

The reason the administration has gone from three years of insisting the border is under control to admitting there is a problem is because of Ron DeSantis.  It was DeSantis who started it all with the brilliant move of sending illegal migrants to Martha's Vineyard, a tactic then adopted by other like Governor Abbott in Texas.  Now that all those Democratic governed sanctuary jurisdictions are being flooded with illegals, it has become a crisis!  It's also heightened the profile of the entire problem in an election year, not a good look for the Democrats.

From the Democrats perspective the issue became how to appear to be doing something meaningful, while not really impacting the general trajectory of encouraging illegals.  Or, if they fail, how to blame Republicans.  The answer; lure into negotiations some GOP senators who really, really want aid to go to Ukraine and Israel, while the Chamber of Commerce wing of the GOP can support them in making minimal cosmetic changes.

I'm in favor of additional aid to Ukraine and Israel, but I think it fair for American citizens to ask, "why should we care more about the borders of foreign countries than we do about our own?".

One of the Democratic negotiators of the bill, Senator Chris Murphy, the callow youth whose only life experience is working on campaigns or running for office, has been tweeting and going on news shows emphasizing to his progressive supporters that the only thing this bill really does is smooth out the flow of illegals into the U.S., making the process more manageable over the long term.  His version of "reducing chaos" is to allow the same numbers in but just over a bit long period.  He's also emphasizing that this is just a three-year deal and that Biden can always declare a national emergency and get around the bill's provisions.  Some excerpts from Murphy's tweets:

"A requirement the President to funnel asylum claims to the land ports of entry when more than 5,000 people cross in a day.  The border never closes [emphasis added by THC], but claims must be processed at the ports.  This allows for a more a more orderly, humane asylum processing system."

"But . . . important checks on that power.  It can only be used for a limited number of days per year.  It sunsets in 3 years..  Emergency cases that show up in between the ports still need to be accepted.  The ports must process a minimum of 1400 claims a day."

"You can't reduce arrivals at the border without allowing for more legal immigration.  So, more visas! [Exclamation point by Murphy, not THC]. 50,000 extra employment and family reunification visas each year for the next 5 years.  And a brand new visa category to allow non-citizens to visit family in the U.S."

"A brand new right to legal representation for all immigrants. . .  And . . . the first ever government paid-for lawyers to young unaccompanied minors."

"A quicker, fairer asylum process.  No more 10 yr wait.  Claims processed in a non-detained [emphasis added by THC], non-adversarial way in 6 months.  Also, no more waiting for work permits.  Most asylum seekers can work immediately."

Yeah, that's the ticket!

There was a lot more wrong with the proposal, but fundamentally, while the border was not controlled under Trump, it was better controlled, so the simplest thing for Biden to do would be to undo all his measures reversing Trump's policy, which he could do without legislation.(1)

The bigger problem:

The GOP does not know how to negotiate.  The Democrats, and many in the GOP, wanted to authorize additional aid for Ukraine and Israel.  The GOP wanted to regain control of our borders and, at least for purposes of the 2024 campaign, the Biden administration wanted to be seen as doing something.

The problem is that the GOP negotiators seem to have started from the position of what is the minimum we can do to satisfy our supporters that will also allow us to get the aid to Ukraine and Israel.  The result is they were negotiating within the context of immigration policy and law.  What they needed to start from was "you" (Democrats) want aid, "we" (GOP) want border security, and here is what you need to give us on the border in order for us to support the aid.  Such a strategy would set up an initially stronger bargaining position, and force Democrats to reveal their preferences and priorities.  Instead the GOP started negotiations on their back feet.

A secondary problem is the lack of expertise and skill in the substance of the legislative language and the interplay of the various provisions in the bill.  GOP staffers are simply not as good as Democrat staffers when it comes to the details, and it is details that count in drafting legislation.  You can have all the nice concepts you want but one innocent sounding clause in the bill can undercut any concept.  This is a long-standing problem but has gotten worse in recent years as so many GOP lawmakers and their staff seem more interested in performance art on Twitter and elsewhere to please their base.

Incoherent GOP strategy.  What the House GOP should have done is bring up the Senate bill, or its version of the bill, proposed extensive amendments to strengthen it, and force the Democrats to vote on each amendment.  It would be easy enough to expose the game being played by the Democrats, but that's not going to happen.

The biggest problem:

The death of compromise.  I don't know if there is a way, regardless of legislative language, to fix this.  The Senate proposal would have allowed Biden to declare a national emergency and override its provisions.  Given this administration's disregard of the law - see the rent moratorium and student loans for example - it is likely that if Biden were to win reelection, he'd simply declare the law inoperative.  Even if he didn't he still controls the administrative bureaucracy, a bureaucracy ruled by Democrats, and could easily undermine the provisions he doesn't like.

I pointed out, in posts in 2014 and 2016 (read the last part of this post), how President Obama's arbitrary and lawless modifications to the Affordable Care Act and immigration law with DACA, undercut the ability of the political parties to reach legislative compromise.  Compromise means each side gets some things it wants in exchange for giving up some other things.  But the Democratic approach to executive power, which has accelerated under Biden, means that even if codified in legislative language, the GOP is likely not to get all the things it thought it got in any bill.  The situation is so dire, if I were in Congress I don't know if I would support any bill, regardless of the language, if we had to rely on a Democratic administration and bureaucracy to implement it.  To do otherwise would make me, as I wrote in the 2016 post linked above, a chump from Palookaville.

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(1) I have not read the full text of the bill, nor, I suspect, have most of the Senators doing the negotiating.  This leaves me relying on the analysis of the few sources I have come to trust over the past few years.  None of these are newpapers, TV, cable, or websites.  It's a difficult situation if you don't have the time to read original documents yourself.  When you do, the details often reveal a very different picture than what is portrayed in the media across the political spectrum.  For instance, in 2015 I read the full text of the Iran Deal to discover the gap between how the media and White House described a key element of the deal and how this would work out in the real world when you read the specific language (see The Iran Deal: It Was Never About Nuclear Weapons).