Roughly 24 hours ago, Republican opposition to a bipartisan package on border policy and security aid was intensifying. House GOP leaders, eager to let the Senate do the dirty work, issued a joint statement urging the upper chamber to bury the legislation quickly.
Most of the joint statement — signed by House Speaker Mike Johnson, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Majority Whip Tom Emmer, and Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik — was predictable, though concluded by noting that GOP members passed “the Secure the Border Act (H.R. 2),” which they claimed “contains the necessary components to actually stem the flow of illegals and end the present crisis. The Senate must take it up immediately. America’s sovereignty is at stake.”
A day earlier, Stefanik published a related tweet, boasting, “House Republicans have already passed HR2 — the Secure Our Border Act, which would actually secure the border.”
On the surface, this makes sense, at least as a tactical matter. GOP officials are scrambling to kill the bipartisan compromise they demanded, which makes them appear ridiculous. But to help address their public-relations problem, these same Republicans are effectively saying, “We’re rejecting one bill, though we’re supporting a rival bill.”
But just below the surface, all of this falls apart rather quicky — because the House Republicans’ legislation hardly deserves to be seen as real legislation. The Washington Post’s Eduardo Porter explained in a column last week:
Efforts to fix immigration, apparently, must run on gasoline. That’s the opinion of House Republicans, anyway, whose attempt at addressing the border crisis … specifies that “no funds are authorized to be appropriated for electric vehicles.” The bill doesn’t, in fact, offer funds for anything that might stop immigration. Instead, it demands that the Department of Homeland Security ensure border agents get adequate religious counseling. While it doesn’t require the Border Patrol to be staffed entirely with anti-vaxxers, it does require DHS to “make every effort to retain Department employees who are not vaccinated against COVID-19.”
For those who don’t follow Congress closely, it’s worth pausing to note a phenomenon known as “messaging bills.” These proposals, which focus on a variety of issues, are not intended to become law. Parties use them to shape political debates, signal their priorities, and impress their respective bases. Proponents realize that the legislation is almost entirely performative, so they pack in all kinds of partisan goodies, indifferent to how members of the other party or other chamber might react. The “Secure Our Border Act” was most certainly a messaging bill. It was plainly obvious when it reached the House floor early last year that it was not a serious attempt at federal policymaking; it was a way for the new Republican majority to pound its chest. For GOP leaders, nearly a year later, to suggest “America’s sovereignty” is dependent on the Senate taking up their unserious proposal is foolish. H.R. 2 was not, is not, a real bill, even if Republicans now prefer to pretend otherwise.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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