Democrats are the big winners from the failure of their border security bill, Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz explained Tuesday after the contentious bill was shelved because it didn’t have the support needed to overcome a filibuster.
The bipartisan bill, negotiated by Republican Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and initially supported by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) failed after top Republicans, including Cruz, were able to review and expose its nefarious details.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) bill was designed to make matters even worse, not to solve the border crisis, Sen. Cruz told Fox News Channel Host Sean Hannity Tuesday evening:
“This whole thing has been a disaster from the very beginning. It has been a disaster on policy and it’s been a disaster on politics. On policy, this bill is terrible. It is a bill that Chuck Schumer wanted that is designed not to secure the border – not just not to secure the border, it is designed to make it worse.”
Specifically, Sen. Cruz explained, the bill exacerbates the border crisis because it:
- Codifies Joe Biden’s open border policies.
- Codifies catch-and-release of illegal aliens (the cause of this crisis).
- Gives work permits to illegal aliens.
- Uses taxpayer dollars to pay for the lawyers of illegal aliens
- Provides billions of dollars to sanctuary cities and the left-wing nonprofit organizations that are facilitating illegal immigration
- Normalizes five thousand illegal immigrants a day (1.8 million a year).
“So, the idiotic Republican proposal was: let’s be for two-thirds of the border invasion that Biden has allowed,” Sen. Cruz said.
“This was a disaster on policy grounds, because it did not solve the problem - but, politically, it was even worse,” Cruz said, noting that the bill’s failure gave Schumer exactly what he wanted:
“Who won in this battle? His name is Charles Schumer. Chuck Schumer did this.
“He knew it would fail. He wanted it to fail. But, the purpose of this bill was to let every Democrat running for the Senate and running for the House, to stand up and say, self-righteously, ‘I wanted to secure the border, I really wanted to, but those mean Republicans wouldn’t let me.’”
Indeed, Democrat President Joe Biden did just that on Tuesday, raising eyebrows by making an outlandish claim blaming Republicans for the border crisis:
“Every day between now and November, the American people are going to know that the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA [Make America Great Again] Republican friends.”
Biden’s claim prompted a backlash on social media - with many (including by X.com owner Elon Musk) characterizing it as an attempt to “gaslight” the American public.
You are being gaslit https://t.co/lXnbrg568A
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 6, 2024
BIDEN: “The only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends.”
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) February 6, 2024
This is an obviously false statement - and Biden’s admin has been falsely claiming that the border is secure for the last three years.