INTERVIEW: Are the Republicans Bidin’ Their Time?

By Reuvain Borchardt

Republican political operative and lobbyist John Feehery discusses the debate and political machinations over the foreign-aid and border-security bill(s).

Feehery formerly served as press secretary, communications director, and speechwriter for Republican congressional leaders including House Minority Leader Bob Michel, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, and House Speaker Dennis Hastert. While working for Hastert, Feehery wrote Hastert’s famous “majority of the majority” speech: that a speaker should only promote legislation that would be passed by a majority of his own party.

The Senate passed a foreign aid bill on earlier this month. What’s in this bill?

It includes $60 billion for Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel.

The rest includes billions for Taiwan and for humanitarian assistance to civilians caught in war zones around the world, including in Gaza. There’s also $400 million for a security grant program at home for institutions at risk of hate crimes, like houses of worship. 

It’s a substantial package totaling over $95 billion. That’s a lot of money in defense. And basically, the idea is to help these countries buy more arms from us so we can help them in their various wars.

The Biden administration originally asked for this sort of foreign aid bill. But Republicans initially said they would only pass it if it included provisions for border security as well. 

Yeah. Republicans wanted to get some border security money. And that kind of morphed into a deal on immigration reform — which is not exactly what the Republicans wanted.

But it started with this idea of border security funding, and then became a bigger negotiation. It became one of these things where Republicans then demanded very harsh immigration provisions that would make it much more difficult for folks to come over here and be able to get asylum in the U.S. And that kind of started the whole negotiation about immigration reform, which I think was far afield from where Republicans wanted to be at the end of the day, and then they backed out of that. And now we just have the foreign assistance bill that passed the Senate.

Before we get to why exactly Republicans backed out of the border deal: Was the reason Republicans originally wanted a border deal included in the foreign-aid bill is that they figured they would never get Biden to pass a standalone border bill, so they decided to tie it to the foreign-aid bill that he wanted passed?

I think Republicans’ idea was that there was no way the Democrats would agree to anything the Republicans wanted on the border, so the Republicans who are against paying for Ukraine decided that tying the two together was a good way to kill the bill and not have to pay for Ukraine. 

But that’s not exactly how Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell looked at it. There’s a split within the Republican Party: a lot of Republicans don’t want to continue funding Ukraine, but a lot of Republicans do. And that’s ultimately what it came down to in the Senate: Enough Republicans and all the Democrats decided they wanted to support Ukraine, which is why they voted for it, and it passed with 70 votes, with 22 Republicans joining nearly all Democrats in voting yes.

So you feel that the initial push by Republicans to tie the foreign aid to the border provisions was not meant as a way of getting the border bill passed, but as a way of ensuring the Ukraine aid would not pass? 

Yes.

I think a lot of Republicans felt that the Democrats would never agree to more border enforcement. 

Again, I don’t think that’s where McConnell was. I think the number-one thing McConnell always wanted was support for Ukraine. And, he was ultimately proven to be the victor on that one.

Well, he’ll really be the victor if the bill ultimately passes the House. I’m not sure if he should be called a victor if he gets enough Republicans to pass a bill in the Senate that goes nowhere in the House.

Anyway, why did the Republicans who are against Ukraine spending have to use this backhanded technique to try to scuttle the bill? Why wouldn’t they just say straight up, “We’re not supporting Ukraine spending”?

It’s a very good question. And by the way, once the bill did come up for a vote, some of them ended up voting for it. 

I think they were trying to tell their constituents they were not going to give money to Ukraine unless we also did something to secure the southern border. They believe their constituents feel that if we’re going to give all this money to Ukraine, we should also do something for the southern border.

There are a lot of different motivations among these senators. But whatever the motivation, that became the tactic or strategy within the Republican conference: to attach as many border-security proposals and strict immigration proposals as possible to this foreign-aid bill. 

I think that they saw that as something that they could take to their constituents and sell it and that that made it more palatable for a lot of their Republican base. 

At some point it became clear that if they were going to pass all this immigration stuff, it was actually going to help Joe Biden, which made it make less sense to them, because Biden would then be able to go into the November election saying that he got his big immigration deal, and then his number-one liability would be taken off the table.

So I think they had a strategy change. The deeper it got into the political season, the more political everything got. 

After Republicans insisted that a foreign-aid bill would have to be tied to border security, Democrats put out a deal that included both. And then the Republicans said, no, we’re not going to pass it. Republicans say their opposition was because it was not tough enough. Democrats say the Republicans weren’t passing it because Donald Trump was opposed to it and they were taking orders from Trump, because he knew it would remove one of Biden’s biggest liabilities. 

Why do you think Republicans ultimately said no to the bill that included border provisions? Is it because they were following Trump’s orders? Or is it because they felt the border provisions weren’t strong enough?

I think it’s a combination: They felt it wasn’t strong enough, and that they didn’t want to give Biden a big political victory and let him off the hook on immigration. I don’t think Trump had anything to do with it. 

But I do think there were some motivations within the Senate conference. There are a few Senate Republicans who don’t really care about Donald Trump and would be happy to see Trump lose again.

It’s too easy to say that they were taking orders from Donald Trump. But I do think it became clear to a lot of these senators that giving a big political victory to Joe Biden was not going to be popular with their constituents. And it also became clear that this was becoming a much more complicated immigration reform bill, and voting on such a bill in an election year is very dangerous, especially for Republicans.

And the final thing is, it became clear that the Republicans in the House were not going to touch the immigration bill with a 10-foot pole, and a lot of Republicans in the Senate felt, why would we vote on something, on immigration, only to have it die in the House? It would just be political suicide. So they started to back away from it. And that’s why they ended up voting for the foreign-aid bill, with nothing about the border.

But the House Republicans don’t seem to like the bill that passed the Senate. Speaker Mike Johnson indicated the bill is dead. His statement read, in part, “The Senate’s foreign aid bill is silent on the most pressing issue facing our country. The mandate of national security supplemental legislation was to secure America’s own border before sending additional foreign aid around the world. It is what the American people demand and deserve. Now, in the absence of having received any single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters. America deserves better than the Senate’s status quo.”

I’m not sure if it’s completely dead. I think Republicans are still trying to figure out what to do with this. There are 50 to 60 Republicans in the House who do not want money to go to Ukraine. I think other members don’t want these big foreign aid bills to pass without having it paid for. We found that out with the Israeli package: House Republicans passed a standalone Israel-aid bill in November which was offset with cuts to the IRS, but when they brought it up again now for a vote without the offsets, they couldn’t pass it because some Republicans voted against it.

And again there are those who feel, why would you pass all this money for Ukraine and Israel and not pass some significant money to secure the southern border without all the immigration provisions?

So you think that even in this election year, Republicans would pass a bill for Biden to sign on border security if it didn’t have the immigration provisions?

I think that they are saying that, yes. But to be honest with you, it’s not completely clear what they’re saying. They are kind of all over the place. And, you know, Johnson isn’t sure exactly what he doesn’t like about the Senate bill coming over. He just knows that he doesn’t like it! 

When Republicans initially passed in November a standalone Israel-aid bill with offsetting cuts in IRS funding, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer didn’t even bring it up for a vote in the Senate.

He didn’t bring it up. And even if enough Republicans had voted for the subsequent standalone Israel bill that did not have the IRS cuts, it was unlikely Schumer would have brought that up for a vote, either.

Because, clearly, the Democrats and the President want to connect money for Ukraine with money for Israel.

Because they know that Israel-funding is much more popular than Ukraine-funding. 

That’s right.

And they also want to include the Taiwan money there. They don’t want to have several different supplementals. They want one big one. 

I think a majority of Republicans want the Ukrainian money. But it’s not a big majority. I think it’s like just over 50/50 right now. But if you couple that with the Democrats, you get a pretty overwhelming number. 

What’s your prediction on whether a foreign-aid bill will pass, and whether it will be tied to the border-security provisions, before the election?

I don’t think anything will happen on the border before the election. My sense is that they’re going to do the appropriation bills before they do the foreign-aid package. 

As for the foreign-aid package, I would say it’s 50/50 right now that anything passes before the election.If it doesn’t, I think it will happen in the lame-duck session. 

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rborchardt@hamodia.com

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This interview originally appeared in Hamodia Prime magazine.