Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell rejected President Biden’s request for Republicans to join Democrats in advancing a border bill when it gets a second vote in the Senate this week.
Mr. Biden called Mr. McConnell of Kentucky to urge the GOP leader to help advance the bill, which the Senate rejected earlier this year when it was tied to an aid package for Ukraine and other U.S. allies.
Mr. McConnell said he told the president he already had the power to stop the chaos at the southern border.
“I said to him … ‘Mr. President, you caused this problem. If there’s no legislation that allows the problem to be fixed, why don’t you just renew what the previous administration was doing, which got the border in decent shape,” he told reporters Tuesday at the Capitol.
The border bill is expected to be defeated again in the revote on Thursday.
The legislation was negotiated by a bipartisan trio of senators after Republicans demanded the foreign aid package include tougher U.S. border policies. When the bill was finalized, most GOP lawmakers rejected it for not going far enough.
Former President Donald Trump helped drive opposition to the bill, with lawmakers echoing his call to wait until the presidential election in November to determine how to proceed. Mr. Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, has vowed if reelected to restore various executive actions he took during his presidency to secure the border and restrict access to asylum seekers.
Mr. Biden undid most of Mr. Trump’s border policies. Republicans like Mr. McConnnell and House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana argue that if the president were serious about securing the border all he would need to do is reimplement the Trump-era policies.
“I think it’s safe to say going to a border bill right now is just a gimmick, a way to try to convince the American people that they’re concerned about this when they caused it,” Mr. McConnell said.
Mr. Biden also called Mr. Johnson seeking support for the bill, though House Republicans have been dug in against it from the start. House Republicans prefer their much tougher Secure the Border Act that the Democrat-led Senate refuses to take up.
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, denied that his decision to hold another vote on his chamber’s border bill is about politics and protecting senators in his party who are up for reelection.
“Democrats are doing this because we believe in fixing the border and we have the most — the only real bipartisan bill negotiated by both sides with a real chance of passing and being put on the president’s desk,” Mr. Schumer told reporters. “Everything the Republicans do have has no chance of passing. So who’s more serious about fixing the border? We are.”
• Lindsey McPherson can be reached at lmcpherson@washingtontimes.com.