Speaker Johnson shoots down bipartisan Senate border deal: 'Absolutely not'

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) hasn't had the best start to his speakership career, but looks to be moving in the right direction according to his latest move.

According to Breitbart, Johnson shot down a border compromise deal hammered out in the Senate, saying in an X post, "Absolutely not."

The deal was a bipartisan attempt to negotiate a border compromise to clear a path for tens of billions in foreign aid packages to be passed.

Republican Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) took the lead on the deal on the GOP side, while Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) represented the Democrats' side.

Absolutely not. pic.twitter.com/tkXma24r8M

— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) January 13, 2024

The deal included:

According to the Immigration Accountability Project, the proposed Senate deal would:

Increase green cards by 50,000/year
Work permits for adult children of H-1B holders
Immediate work permits to every illegal alien released from custody
Taxpayer-funded lawyers to certain UACs and mentally incompetent aliens
Expulsion authority for a limited number of days only if encounters exceed 5K/day over a seven-day period
Restrict parole for those who enter without authorization between ports of entry

Part of the deal would include the ability to push through more aid packages for Ukraine, which has become a white-hot political topic and strongly opposed by most Republicans.

Johnson insisted that at the very least, the baseline of the deal must include provisions from the House-passed H.R. 2 border security bill, otherwise it's a no-go from him.

During a recent Face the Nation interview, Johnson explained why it's important that any bipartisan deal contain provisions from the H.R. 2 border security bill.

"If you don’t end catch and release as a policy, if you don’t reinstitute remain in Mexico, if you only fix asylum or parole and not these other things, then you don’t solve the problem. You don’t stem the flow here," Johnson said at the time.

He added, "If it looks like H.R. 2, we’ll talk about it."

Lankford has argued that it's highly unlikely that Senate Democrats and President Joe Biden's White House would agree to provisions set forth in H.R. 2.

Social media users called on Johnson to shut down the border or shut down the government.

"Do you have the guts to do what's right for the American people? Shut down the border or shut down the government. Period," one X user wrote.