Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is pressing the Senate to prioritize the House’s flagship border security bill, arguing “now is not the time” to focus on advancing “comprehensive” reforms. 

Johnson is set to meet with President Joe Biden at the White House on Wednesday afternoon alongside other congressional leaders to discuss the national security supplemental currently being negotiated in the Senate. Lawmakers in the upper chamber have been hammering out that legislation over the last month as Democrats seek to secure additional foreign aid for Ukraine in exchange for stricter border policies being pushed by Republicans. 

Although the Senate has not yet finalized its border deal, the proposal looks increasingly to be dead on arrival in the House. Johnson has already said he won’t take up the Senate border legislation as it’s unlikely to garner enough support among House conservatives to pass through the lower chamber. 

Instead, the speaker is urging his colleagues in the Senate to pass H.R. 2, Republicans’ signature border bill that passed through the House last summer. 

“It’s a complex issue. I don’t think now is the time for comprehensive immigration reform because we know how complicated that is — you can’t do that quickly,” Johnson said on Wednesday in an apparent dig at the Senate border talks.

Senate Republicans are pursuing policy changes, including restrictions on asylum, that the White House is open to, but the prospect of Democratic deal-sweeteners making their way into the bill, or large elements of H.R. 2 being missing, has soured its prospects in the House.

“I do think it’s past time to secure the border. That’s what H.R. 2 reflects,” Johnson said.

House Republicans passed the Secure the Border Act in May of last year, but the legislation has since sat dormant in the Democratic-led Senate. Now, Senate Republican leaders are shifting their focus to border negotiations with Democrats, contending it may be the only way they can secure policy wins. 

That could put Johnson at odds with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) when they meet with Biden on Wednesday afternoon — especially as the speaker says he plans to press the president specifically on his Ukraine funding request. 

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“I’m gonna tell him the same thing I’ve been saying from the beginning. With regard to Ukraine, we have needed and we have requested publicly, privately, [and] in every forum answers to the critical question: What is the endgame and strategy in Ukraine?” Johnson said. “We need to know that Ukraine would not be another Afghanistan.”

“I’m going to tell the president what I’m telling all of you,” he added. “We have to secure our own border before we talk about doing anything else.”