During CNN’s GOP presidential forum wrap-up show, anchor Abby Phillip berated U.S. Rep. Chip Roy on negotiating border security with the White House, even as the southern border implodes and is overrun with 300,000 migrants per day.
Watch as Phillip practically demands that the House acquiesce to whatever the White House can negotiate with the Senate, raising the specter of a government shutdown. Below is the full exchange in its entirety, as aired on CNN’s post-town hall on Thursday, January 4th, 2024 (click “expand” to view transcript):
ABBY PHILLIP: I want to turn quickly to border talks. You were not among the Republicans who visited the southern border this week, and you're calling for your colleagues to instead act with urgency, and shut the government down over the border. How would shutting the government down make the border safer?
U.S. REP. CHIP ROY: Well, I think I always like to kind of reverse the question, right? Which is: why on Earth would I give a blank check of more money to Alejandro Mayorkas, who is trying to blame Texas for open borders when he is leaving the borders exposed for dangerous cartels, empowering those cartels to move dangerous narcotics and fentanyl into our country, dangerous individuals, people who are on terrorist watch lists. I had six kids in the district I represent, the school district, they died from fentanyl last year. Six. Just in that school district. We've had countless Texans getting overrun, ranches getting overrun. And Alejandro Mayorkas has the gall to go and try to blame Texas? So Congress ought to stand up and use the power of the purse and say, “No, I'm sorry Mister President, you’re not going to get a blank check. You're going to come sit at the table with the Article One Congress- we're going to tell you, we're going to have a voice in this, let's sit down, let's stop the flow, let's make sure that we're safe”, because I’m telling you…Texans are tired -- of.
PHILLIP: But I’ll ask you again, Congressman…how does shutting…
ROY: We’re not going to do that anymore.
PHILLIP: …how does shutting the government down secure the border?
ROY: Well, what- what I'm saying is, you can actually pass legislation that says that you're going to fund troops, fund Border Patrol, but you can say “guys, we are not going to give you full funding”.
PHILLIP: Why doesn't Congress just do that, as opposed to not doing its job in funding the government? Why don't you just sit down, just as the White House and Senate Republicans are doing now? Sit down and negotiate.
ROY: Yeah. Well, the House has passed legislation to address the issue and they have a job. The president ought to be sitting down with the house saying, here's what we're going to do to secure the border. But that's not what they're doing. Alejandro Mayorkas looked at the camera today, and he said he would not try to end the releases into the United States, and instead have detentions, and have people remain in Mexico. He said no, we've got to continue to release. We're going to have 300,000 a month of encounters. That's unsustainable. So the whole point here is to look at people and look, when I called ranchers the day before yesterday in south Texas, local law enforcement, sheriffs, Border Patrol, I asked them, what do you think we need to do? They said “if you can't shut down the border, then shut down the government”. And the whole point of that is to say “Guys, we need to get your attention, you need to come to the table. You cannot continue to do what you're doing, not just to Americans, but the little girls getting sold in the sex trafficking trade. Or the people, the 53 migrants who died in a tractor trailer in San Antonio, which I represent, in August in the summer heat. We can't continue to do this. So you can use the power of the purse to force the president to the table. That's the whole point of divided government.
PHILLIP: Congressman Chip Roy, we appreciate you joining us tonight. Thank you.
ROY: Hey, God bless. Thanks.
We often tend to forget that the Founders intended Congress to have primacy among the three constitutional branches of government. Congress has the enumerated power to appropriate funding, and that power originates in the House of Representatives. To hear Phillip, you’d think that Congressman Roy is making unreasonable demands when in fact he is just asking that the Constitution be followed.
The question of “how does shutting down the government secure the border” is also a straw man intended to make Roy look unreasonable and intransigent. As an essential agency, the Border Patrol is compelled to operate through government shutdowns. Furthermore, reasonable people can conclude that the point is moot since the border is currently insecure despite the government being fully funded. Therefore, nothing would really change.
Two initiatives- the funding of the Ukraine and the White House’s $14B ask for “border security”, which consists mostly of increasing the amount of immigration judges, are stymied by the passage of H.R. 2, which addresses border security and imposes more stringent controls. The goal is to make border security proponents look unreasonable while making the Biden White House look a little less awful on immigration.
Classic media firefighting.
