Johnson knocks ‘desperate’ White House blame-shifting on border: ‘More smoke and mirrors’

The office of Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) circulated a memo Friday morning rejecting the White House’s attempts to blame House Republicans for the border crisis.

The Republican-led House is demanding sweeping changes to immigration law as illegal crossings set new daily records, with conservatives going so far as to threaten a government shutdown if the border is not brought under control.

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Johnson blames President Joe Biden for the crisis, specifically his decision to repeal Trump-era border policies upon assuming office. He has urged the president to take executive action to stem border crossings, a call he reiterated in a trip to Eagle Pass, Texas, on Wednesday.

The White House has attempted to flip the script on that narrative, however, in recent days, saying it is Republicans who have the “anti-border security record.” The president has requested billions in new border funding, Biden officials point out, while the House voted for funding cuts they claim would slash thousands of Border Patrol jobs.

The memo, circulated by Raj Shah, Johnson’s deputy chief of staff for communications, represents an effort to “correct the record” on what he says is a “desperate attempt” by the White House to “shift blame for a crisis their policies have induced.”

The request for border funding — Biden asked for $14 billion as part of a larger national security supplemental — is little more than “smoke and mirrors,” Shah said.

Most of that request has “zero or little to do with border security,” he added, while the portion that does is geared more toward “processing illegal immigration into the interior as fast as possible, arguably to hide the humanitarian crisis from public view.”

Biden wants to hire hundreds of asylum officers and immigration judges to process claims more quickly while funding 1,300 new Border Patrol agents, among other drug and human smuggling countermeasures.

As for the claim that House Republicans voted to cut Border Patrol, Shah called the line a “debunked talking point,” citing fact-checkers who say the statistic is the result of the White House’s back-of-the-napkin math rather than any actual appropriation.

The House did vote to roll back federal spending to fiscal 2022 levels this past spring but largely omitted what parts of the budget those cuts would come from.

Furthermore, Shah noted the Homeland Security appropriations bill the House passed in September would increase border funding over the president’s 2024 budget request.

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The memo represents the latest in Johnson’s war of words with the president. Biden has shown openness to some of the policy changes demanded by Republicans, including changes to asylum law, but has threatened to veto the starting point for those talks — the flagship border security bill the House passed in May.

So far, Johnson is not engaged in negotiations with the president; Senate Republicans have taken the lead. But his buy-in will be necessary for the border reforms, seen as necessary to unlock a grand bargain on Ukraine aid, to become law.

Andrew Bates, spokesman for the White House, told the Washington Examiner the memo “proves we struck a nerve” with Johnson, doubling down on the notion that the steep spending cuts proposed by House Republicans would have hurt border enforcement.

“Speaker Johnson and House Republicans left Washington for an early vacation in mid-December while President Biden and Senators from both parties continued working to find common ground,” Bates said in a statement. “The President is focused on securing the resources he requested in the National Security supplemental to secure our border, including more Border Patrol agents, asylum officers, immigration judges, and technology to catch fentanyl.”