Cruz denounces lack of any ‘meaningful’ border security policy in House-passed foreign aid package
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) lamented the lack of any “meaningful” efforts to secure the southern border after the House passed a $95 billion foreign aid package on Saturday.
The Lone Star state senator emphasized that the “most disappointing” part of the packaged deal is its lack of any meaningful border policies. However, he did note while speaking on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures that “the best parts of the bill” was the $26.3 billion in aid to Israel included in the measure.
He also praised the legislation for including a provision that would force Chinese-owned ByteDance to divest from its stake in the social media giant TikTok.
On Saturday, lawmakers voted 215-199 to defeat a border security bill, known as the End the Border Catastrophe Act, that was separate from the foreign aid package. The border security measure fell short of the two-thirds majority threshold needed to pass the House under suspension of the rules, with only five Democrats voting with all Republicans in favor of the border bill.
The bill included several measures to limit the number of immigrants allowed into the country to seek asylum while also seeking to revive some Trump-era immigration policies that were dismantled under President Joe Biden.
The failure on Saturday of the separate border bill came the same day bipartisan lawmakers passed the foreign aid proposals that will be sent to the Senate with Biden’s support. That package had broad Democratic support, while members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus urged lawmakers to defy Johnson’s leadership because it did not include any border security measures.
“This was an opportunity to take a serious step forward on the border. And unfortunately, the Democratic Party’s position is that they support open borders, they’re unwilling to do anything on border security,” Cruz said, while defending Johnson as someone with a “virtually impossible job” now that the GOP is down to a single-vote majority in the House.
The Ukraine Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2024, also offers $60.84 billion in total aid. The bill uses $23.2 billion for replenishing U.S. weapons and facilities, a component Cruz said he supported, while $11.3 billion goes to current U.S. military operations in the area, and $13.8 goes to helping Ukraine buy advanced weapons systems and other weapons.
Cruz also criticized Democrats for “essentially nuked the impeachment” of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and expressed his disappointment with Congress not backing a provision for the renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that would require the government to obtain a warrant for searches of U.S. citizens included in foreign surveillance.
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“This week was a bad week for the United States Constitution,” Cruz said.
Johnson’s grasp of the speaker’s gavel has also come into question in recent days as three GOP lawmakers, led by Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), supported a “motion to vacate” that could lead to a vote on removing the speaker.
