Former Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele urged congressional lawmakers — especially House Republicans — to "take the win" on the bipartisan border legislation coming out of the Senate, stressing that it's a "conservative bill" that will contain what Republicans have been "yammering about for years."
Further, Steele took a jab at House Republicans for calling the bill "dead on arrival" when text of the legislation hasn't been released yet.
Steele made the comments in an interview with MSNBC on Friday ahead of the bill's debut on the Senate floor next week. The legislation, which is being hashed out by Sens. James Lankford, R-Okla., Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., also includes aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.
"Take the win. Take the win," Steele said. "This is a moment that, you know, when you stop and think about it, is very clarifying. Democrats and Republicans have negotiated a conservative border bill."
The biggest obstacle reportedly is a measure that would block illegal border crossings for asylum seekers once the number of migrant encounters hits a daily average of 5,000 in a week or 8,500 in a day.
"It does a lot of the things that these Republicans in the House, in particular, have been yammering about for years, and quite frankly, did nothing about when [Donald] Trump was president," Steele added. "They had the Senate and they had the House. There was no border bill."
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., recently called the legislation "dead on arrival" in the lower chamber, which Steele found curious.
"How do you criticize something you don't even know what's in it?" he said. "And then when you look at it, from what we're being told, it will contain pretty much everything you've been yammering out."
But for Johnson, that means HR 2 under a different name.
"I'm not prejudging anything, but I've told them the necessary elements of HR 2 are what are required to get control of the border," Johnson said Friday in an interview with Fox Business. "I've been consistent, and that's our standard."
Complicating the calculus for House Republicans is that GOP front-runner Donald Trump has assailed the bill and publicly called on Republicans to reject it, too. Steele was asked if sinking the bill would jeopardize Republicans' ability to hold the House in November.
"They've already lost the House!" Steele said. "Take the deal. You're not winning those five congressional seats you took in New York two years ago. That issue's gone. Take the deal."
In the end, Steele predicted Republicans will pass the legislation "because there is no other endgame here."
"Because guess what, if you don't take the deal, guess who gets the blame for the border problems that happen between now and November?" he said. "If there's any surge in the border between now and November, that's on Republicans in the House. ... Whatever happens, it's on Republicans at this point. Take the deal.
"Because on the other side of this deal is a wasteland of hurt," he said.
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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