McConnell’s comment might have seemed like a huge blow for Ukraine aid. But barely an hour later, White House officials arrived on Capitol Hill for their first in-person conversation with Senate negotiators, a meeting planned before McConnell went to the microphones.
The stern message from McConnell summed up the tensions between Washington’s leaders as they labor to send one last tranche of aid to Ukraine before the election. While both sides are determined to get to a deal, a lack of trust on one of the thorniest issues in domestic politics has bedeviled the negotiations and prevented any sort of tangible agreement. Now, while Senate negotiators vow to keep working into January, the reality is that future aid for Ukraine — a shared priority for the White House and McConnell — is more in doubt than ever.
Democrats were immediately skeptical of the GOP demand to tie Ukraine and border policy together, even as Biden himself requested more border funding. Republicans were equally leery that the White House would ever come their way. And everything slowed down as a result.
“Biden thought the Republicans weren’t doing enough. The Republicans thought Biden wasn’t doing enough,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer recalled in an interview.
That changed in the Dec. 12 meeting, when Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and senior White House officials, as well senior McConnell aides, joined the negotiations. It was the first of a series of breakneck meetings when negotiations got far more serious.
“They each put significant people at the table. And not just at the table for show; sitting there day in and day out,” Schumer said.
Congress has now finished its business for the year, though chief negotiators Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) are continuing their urgent talks. McConnell and Schumer believe the Senate can take up an agreement in January, and the two leaders met one last time on Wednesday about the matter before breaking for the month.
Even getting to this point was laborious. Before the White House got involved, the Senate negotiators had already spent weeks trying to make headway on a border policy compromise, and talks stalled multiple times. Biden administration officials got involved only because it became clear Republicans “had moved off their extreme proposals,” according to a White House official granted anonymity to discuss private conversations and strategy, referring to the House’s conservative-favored H.R. 2.
It was a shift from the White House’s earlier strategy, one that they used in earlier legislative negotiations, often successfully. They let senators negotiate among themselves, but keep in touch with the players.
That in mind, administration officials dispute the GOP characterization that the White House was late to the border issue. Even during the nascent talks, when the White House kept its distance, Zients, counselor Steve Ricchetti and Office of Legislative Affairs Director Shuwanza Goff kept in close contact with Schumer, Murphy, Lankford and McConnell, according to the official. The advisers had daily border meetings in Zients’ office.
The thinking, according to the official, was that muscling into the talks, still in their infancy, would only serve to complicate things — and potentially anger independent-minded senators. In early November, lead Democratic negotiator Murphy said “sometimes the Senate needs to work its will on its own. I think that’s the case right now.”
Eventually though, that had to change as Republicans implored Biden to move more forcefully. And the inclusion of White House officials was one of a series of mini-breakthroughs: Lankford backed off Speaker Mike Johnson’s hard-line position, Democrats said they were open to new border restrictions they have typically resisted and a Gang of Six Senate negotiators narrowed to three.
It hasn’t produced a deal, but the Senate is undeniably closer than it’s been in months. In the end, both parties and the White House continued working well past McConnell’s deadline.
“We Democrats realize we have to do something on the border. It has to be done in concert in keeping in consonance with our principles,” Schumer said in an interview. “We showed them some things we were willing to consider — no final deals have been made — they said: ‘Gee whiz, they’re serious.’”
Still, the House may never take up the Senate product; Johnson’s informed Senate leaders he’ll settle for only…
Read More: Why McConnell warned Biden on border-Ukraine talks