Senate Minority Whip John Thune told CNN’s Manu Raju on Monday that there is no way the Senate can vote on an immigration deal this week, meaning aid for Ukraine and Israel will not pass either.
“That is a fact, yeah. There’s no way,” he said.
Senators have been negotiating in search of a deal over tightening immigration policy in order to unlock support for billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine and Israel, but after weeks of talks and delaying the start of the Senate’s winter recess by a week, a deal has so far eluded negotiators.
Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, noted that he believes they could eventually get a deal, but said that they need more time, blaming Democrats and the White House for taking too long to respond to GOP proposals.
“I think it can, it’s unfortunate it took them this long to engage. We put our proposal out there the first week in November, and we’ve been waiting since then for the Democrats to react, the White House finally got engaged last week,” Thune said. “I mean, some of the stuff has some degree of complexity to it, but in the end, it’s all about policies that will stem the flow at the southern border, and getting Democrats to come around, work with us to make that happen. But I don’t think that’s going to happen this week.”
Thune also pushed back on former President Donald Trump’s comments that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
“My grandfather’s an immigrant, so that’s not a view I share. We’re a nation of immigrants, but we are a nation of laws and we’ve got to enforce the law,” Thune said. “I mean, we have legal pathways to get people here, having people come in the way they are right now, just in droves across the southern border, and in many cases a lot of unsavory characters getting into the country that way, it’s just wrong and needs to be…
Read the full article here