Sen. Chris Murphy remarked, “Obviously we’re all here; that’s good news.”
While the Senate is away for the weekend, important negotiators are still in the Capitol on Friday, continuing their meetings with White House representatives in an attempt to reach a resolution. These negotiators are working feverishly to finish border provisions as part of a supplemental aid package to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.
The group met for approximately two hours on Friday morning with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, White House Director of Legislative Affairs Shuwanza Goff, and staff from Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. The group included Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and James Lankford, R-Okla. There are also meetings planned for later on Friday.
“It’s good to hear that everyone is present,” Murphy remarked.
Senators told ABC News that the talks in the room are still fruitful. Although the range of potential border policy agreements is still unknown, lawmakers appear more hopeful that they are getting close to a practical solution.
After Schumer declared on Thursday afternoon that he intended to keep the Senate in session the following week, partly in order to give negotiators more time to reach a consensus, the talks between the parties resumed in earnest on Friday. However, as Schumer would like, it will be quite the task to turn any agreement, which has not yet been reached, into legislative text in time for a vote on it.
“It’s admittedly a very aggressive goal to get this on the floor next week,” Murphy stated. “But there’s a lot of good faith in that room. There’s still a lot of disagreements. We continue to work at it.”
There have been worries about what could happen if a Senate bill passes and then sits for weeks before the House returns from the holiday break, ready to be mocked. Murphy did, however, argue that the Senate is better off moving forward now given the enormous backlog of work that Congress will have when it reconvenes in January.
“I worry every day about the House of Representatives and their functionality. The problem is we have a really tough calendar in January,” Murphy stated.
The engagement of Mayorkas and other White House officials has aided in accelerating the negotiation process.
“Our goal is to try to make the border operations more manageable,” Murphy stated. “You need the managers at the table in order to know the consequences of the policy, and you obviously need the White House at the table because they need to support any piece of legislation we release.”
Senators stated that they anticipate meeting with the White House over the weekend. They’ve already set aside time for this Saturday.
Holiday Recess Looms, Unfinished Business Persists: House Heads Home with a Long To-Do List
The Senate will reconvene in Washington next week, but the House began its holiday recess on Thursday. President Joe Biden has stated that Congress has a long list of tasks to complete, including providing much-needed aid to Israel and Ukraine.
Republicans in Congress are pushing for significant adjustments to border policy, which has caused a massive military aid package for Israel and Ukraine to become stuck.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that the Senate will postpone its holiday break and reconvene next week to continue negotiating the Ukraine funding supplemental bill, which would include border policy provisions, as pressure to reach a compromise grows. He declared that the national security aid package will be put to a vote by the Senate at some point next week.
After declaring “significant progress” in the border talks, Schumer now said that negotiators would continue working through the weekend in order to “reach a framework agreement.”
“We all know that so much depends on our success, so this might be one of the hardest things we have ever had to work through,” Schumer remarked on the Senate floor.
Following their final vote in the House on Thursday morning, members hurried to the airport in order to board flights home and start their three-week holiday break. It’s unclear if the House will convene again the following week.
Schumer urged Congress to stay in talks and not give up, but his requests are probably pointless in the absence of a border agreement.
“If Republicans are serious about getting something done, they should not be so eager to go home. This may be our last best chance to get this legislation done,” Schumer stated on Thursday.
“After weeks of deadlock, we have seen significant progress over the past few days, and we should take advantage of the opportunity, because we may not get one again for quite a while. It is not easy to reach an agreement on something this complicated, but so much hangs on our success, so we need to try with everything we have,” he stated.
Schumer said that adversaries like Russian President Vladimir Putin are keeping an eye on what Congress is doing.
“[Putin] is eager to see us abandon Ukraine and thinks he is getting that done, working, in part, through Donald Trump,” Schumer stated.
After nearly two years of fighting, Putin stated on Thursday that there would not be peace in Ukraine until Russia achieved its objectives, which he claims have not changed.
According to National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby, “I sure hope that those House Republicans, who have been holding hostage critical assistance to Ukraine for months, heard Putin’s message loud and clear” on Thursday during the White House press briefing. “Instead, they’re heading home for the holidays, while Ukrainians are heading right back into the fight.”
