President Joe Biden is expected to meet at the White House with congressional leaders on Wednesday to discuss his months-old request for roughly $106 billion to spend on a variety of national security issues that has failed to make headway on Capitol Hill.
The meeting will address Biden’s “top priority” supplemental funding request from October, which seeks more money for U.S. allies such as Ukraine and Israel as well as border security, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters in a briefing on Tuesday.
Jean-Pierre also referenced bipartisan negotiations in the Senate where lawmakers are trying to hash out a deal tying border security reforms to Ukraine aid after Republicans blocked an effort to advance a national security package in December.
“While the president is having this really important meeting tomorrow, negotiations on a bipartisan agreement on the border that includes funding and policy are still ongoing,” Jean-Pierre said, adding that Biden’s team believes the talks are “headed in the right direction.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) will attend the meeting with other congressional leaders, his spokesman Raj Shah confirmed on X. Punchbowl News reported Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), and “key” committee leaders were also invited.
The meeting is slated to happen as Congress also contends with a separate battle over fiscal 2024 spending and a possible two-tiered government shutdown in the coming weeks if lawmakers are unable to resolve their differences or at least pass another stop-gap measure.
Purported details of the border agreement being negotiated in the Democrat-led Senate were released in recent days by a group called the Immigration Accountability Project and displayed in an infographic shown by Fox News.
The alleged deal included an increase in green cards, more work permits, tax-payer-funded lawyers for some unaccompanied minors and mentally incompetent illegal immigrants, allowing 5,000 migrants to enter the U.S. each day, and restricting parole for those who enter without authorization between ports of entry.
Absolutely not. pic.twitter.com/tkXma24r8M
— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) January 13, 2024
Johnson, who is facing intense pressure from conservatives to take a strong stance on border security and rein in spending, rejected the deal as reported. “Absolutely not,” he said in a post to X along with the Fox News infographic.
Other members of Congress advocated for H.R. 2, border legislation passed by the GOP-led House last year that Schumer has refused to allow the Senate to consider, dismissing what he described as “partisan right-wing demands.”
Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), who has led the Senate talks on the GOP side along with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) for the Democrats, urged lawmakers not to jump to any conclusions.
“I encourage people to read the border security bill before they judge the border security bill. I also advise people not to believe everything you read on the internet,” Lankford said in a post to X last week.
CNN’s Manu Raju reported that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas met with Lankford and other Senate negotiators on Tuesday morning to discuss immigration.
“Our target is to get text out as quickly as we can,” Lankford reportedly said. “And we’re hoping to be able to do that this week. But we continue to go through little technical things that are just constantly going to come up over and over again. You gotta get them resolved.”