As the Senate prepared to vote on a national security package, which included aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, President Joe Biden delivered brief remarks from the White House about the importance of the legislation.
“This cannot wait. … It’s as simple as that,” the Democrat said. “Frankly, I think it’s stunning that we’ve gotten to this point in the first place.” Biden added that congressional Republicans appeared willing to give Russia’s Vladimir Putin “the greatest gift he could hope for.”
Roughly five hours later, GOP senators nevertheless followed through on their threats. NBC News reported:
The Senate failed Wednesday to begin debate on President Joe Biden’s national security package, with Republicans unifying to filibuster it due to a lack of immigration limits that they have demanded be a condition for winning their support.
The final tally was 49-51, with every Senate Republican voting in lockstep. They were joined by Sen. Bernie Sanders, who wants new restrictions on U.S. aid to Israel. (The threshold for success on this vote was 60, not 50, so even if the Vermont independent had voted with Democrats, the measure would’ve fallen far short.)
This is not an instance in which the GOP minority opposes security aid to U.S. allies abroad. On the contrary, Senate Republican leaders have voiced public support for the underlying goals of the national security package.
But because GOP senators realize this is a life-or-death issue, the party is trying to leverage the desperate circumstances for an unrelated goal: Republicans have said that unless Democrats accept far-right changes to U.S. asylum and parole laws, the GOP will simply let our allies abroad suffer. If that ends up helping the Kremlin, it’s a price Republicans are apparently prepared to pay.
In this instance, I’m not just referring to a handful of extremists: Literally every GOP senator, including the party’s ostensible “moderates,” are going along with this scheme. Members such as Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski could’ve broken ranks without consequence — the legislation still wouldn’t have passed — but they instead stuck with their party and its hostage strategy.
“Republicans are playing a dangerous game with the fate of the free world,” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy said in a written statement.
The Connecticut senator’s perspective is of particular interest because he’s spent much of the last month at the negotiating table, offering concessions in the hopes of working out an agreement. Those talks recently collapsed after Republicans said they would only accept all of their demands.
“I think there’s a misunderstanding on the part of [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer and some of our Democratic friends,” Republican Sen. John Cornyn told NBC News. “This is not a traditional negotiation, where we expect to come up with a bipartisan compromise on the border. This is a price that has to be paid in order to get the supplemental.”
As we discussed soon after, the Texan’s candor was illuminating. For these GOP senators, there is no give and take. These talks are not designed to be constructive policy negotiations in which both sides make concessions and work towards a common goal. Republicans, in the dynamic they’ve created for themselves, are not playing the role of policymakers. Rather, they want and expect to be seen as hostage-takers. They haven’t presented Democrats with an idea to be explored; they’ve handed Democrats a list of demands they expect to be met. So what happens now? In the short term, there’s some chatter about renewed Senate discussions, and Biden explicitly said on Wednesday that he’s “willing to make significant compromises on the border.” The process is on life support, but the plug has not yet been pulled altogether. But in the longer term, it’s worth appreciating the fact that we’re entering a new era in which policies are crafted not through the traditional governing process, but through hostage-taking. If Republicans were serious about pursuing changes to immigration policies, they could’ve opened bipartisan negotiations and forged a compromise. They found it vastly easier to effectively tell Democrats, “Give us what we want, or Putin gets what he wants.” The more this becomes the new normal on Capitol Hill — it’s not dissimilar to Republicans threatening to crash the U.S. economy on purpose by way of debt-ceiling hostage standoffs — the more dangerous the systemic conditions become.
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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