How do you know that the wall is never, ever going to be built on the Southern Border? Because the Senate Republicans negotiated themselves into a box canyon again. For the seventh time.

In September, 2001, President George W. Bush held a state dinner with then-Mexico President Vicente Fox as part of meetings to hammer out a border and immigration reform package that would then be worked on with Congress. The plan never included building a wall on the border, but did talk about regularizing 8.5 million people here illegally and improving a guest worker program. Six days later, 19 Middle Eastern terrorists here on bogus passports and manipulated visas hijacked four commercial airplanes and used them as guided missiles, killing 3,000 Americans. That ended any talk about border security enhancements. We were at war.

In 2005, then-Senator John McCain negotiated a deal with then-Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy that would give people here illegally a path to legal residency, provided they paid all the appropriate fines. There was no talk about building a wall in that negotiation, and that deal fell apart. It never was scheduled for a floor vote.

Wisconsin’s Jim Sensenbrenner came up with a House package in 2006 that was a lot stricter. It had penalties and classified everyone involved with the illegal migration – the immigrants themselves and the human smuggling enabling network here and in Mexico, as felons. It promised hundreds of miles of fencing to be build, but fell short of actually appropriating the money and codifying it. That bill was passed in the House, a different package was passed in the Senate, without the promise of the wall. George W. Bush had promised to sign the House version, but once the Senate and House had to go to reconciliation to hammer out the differences in the two versions of the bill, that’s where it died. Nothing received a final vote.

Harry Reid in 2007 tried to jam down a Senate immigration compromise bill that was negotiated by Arizona’s Jon Kyl, one of our favorite senators all-time, and South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham. That version had money appropriated for barriers at the border, but those barriers were electronic monitoring devices, other tech devices, but no appreciable wall being built. It never got scheduled for a vote in the Senate and the subject died again.

In 2113, The Gang of 8, four Democrats and four Republicans, including Florida’s Marco Rubio, Jeff Flake of Arizona, McCain and Graham, promised there would be up to 700 miles of fencing. No appropriation, no penalty if it didn’t get built, but another promise that we’re serious this time. Being this was the fifth time of promising but not actually delivering a wall, it died in the House.

In 2018, with a Republican-controlled House and Senate, President Donald Trump was able to sign a $1.3 trillion dollar omnibus package that did have $1.3 billion appropriated specifically for border wall construction, a first. Trump used that language and an executive order he issued a year earlier, 13767, and actually oversaw approximately 500 miles of legitimate fencing.

This year, Speaker Mike Johnson and the House Republicans came through with a pretty decent package, H.R. 2, which would deal substantially with the lawlessness the Joe Biden era ushered in as of 2021. There is not only appropriated wall funding, but a lot of very necessary ingredients.

(Sec. 102) This section requires the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to resume all activities related to constructing a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border that were underway or planned prior to January 20, 2021.

(Sec. 103) This section imposes additional requirements on DHS related to the construction of barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border. For example, the bill requires DHS to construct a border wall (including related infrastructure and technology) along at least 900 miles of that border, whereas currently DHS is required to have at least 700 miles of reinforced fencing along that border.

This section also requires DHS to waive all legal requirements necessary to ensure the expeditious construction of the border barriers, whereas currently DHS is authorized to waive such requirements. on major border security technology acquisitions, generally those that cost at least $100 million based on FY2023 constant dollars.

Naturally, Chuck Schumer has let this bill languish untouched on his desk in the Senate. Instead, he called on Kyrsten Sinema, Chris Murphy to deal with James Lankford and Thom Tillis on a compromise deal. After weeks of hints and promises of good things, but nothing about a wall, the text finally dropped this weekend. In short, it sucks. If you had to codify Wimpy promising to pay you Wednesday for a cheeseburger today, this Senate monstrosity would be that. Here is the relevant Section 205 of the proposed Senate bill.

SEC. 205. The remaining unobligated balances, as of 16 the date of enactment of this Act, from amounts made 17 available under the heading ‘‘U.S. Customs and Border 18 Protection—Procurement, Construction, and Improvements’’ in division D of the Consolidated Appropriations 20 Act, 2020 (Public Law 116–93) and described in section 21 209(a)(1) of such division of that Act and division F of 22 the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (Public Law 23 116–260) and described in section 210 of such division 24 of that Act are hereby rescinded, and an amount of additional new budget authority equivalent to the amount rescinded pursuant to this section is hereby appropriated, 2 for an additional amount for fiscal year 2024, to remain 3 available until September 30, 2028, and shall be available 4 for the same purposes and under the same authorities and 5 conditions for which such amounts were originally pro-6 vided in such Acts: Provided, That none of the funds allocated for pedestrian physical barriers pursuant to this section may be made available for any purpose other than 9 the construction of steel bollard pedestrian barrier built 10 at least 18 to 30 feet in effective height and augmented 11 with anti-climb and anti-dig features: Provided further, 12 That for purposes of this section, the term ‘‘effective 13 height’’ refers to the height above the level of the adjacent 14 terrain features: Provided further, That none of the funds 15 allocated for pedestrian physical barriers pursuant to this 16 section may be made available for any purpose other than 17 construction of pedestrian barriers consistent with the de-18 scription in the first proviso at locations identified in the 19 Border Security Improvement Plan submitted to Congress 20 on August 1, 2020: Provided further, That the Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection may 22 reprioritize the construction of physical barriers outlined 23 in the Border Security Improvement Plan and, with prior 24 approval of the Committees on Appropriations of the House of Representatives and the Senate, add additional 1 miles of pedestrian physical barriers where no such barriers exist, prioritized by operational requirements developed in coordination with U.S. Border Patrol leadership: 4 Provided further, That within 180 days of the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall submit a report 6 to the Committees on Appropriations of the House of Representatives and the Senate detailing how the funds will 8 be used, by sector, to include the number of miles to be 9 built: Provided further, That none of the funds made avail-10 able pursuant to this section shall be available for obligation until the Secretary submits the report detailed in the 12 preceding proviso.

I’m sorry, what the hell is that? After a plan is submitted by Homeland Security, and after obligatory spending, anything left over in the budget, if there is anything left over, should be planned for building a wall sometime over the next five years of an unstated distance? Nope. Not nearly good enough.

It not only does not specifically outline how much in length, what timing, what account the money is coming from so it can’t be hijacked by any other executive action, what penalties would be applied for breaking the law of misappropriating the funding for wall construction, none of that is in here. It’s vastly weaker than the House version. At the same time, it gives Joe Biden cover on an issue that he’s getting absolutely killed on in polling. Bloomberg showed a 61-33% gap of culpability on the border crisis, Biden taking a 2-1 beating over responsibility for it becoming a humanitarian and national security disaster. If the Republicans in the Senate vote for a bill that has no real wall construction in it, and the House caves in reconciliation, and Joe Biden signs it, any further problems at the border, which are guaranteed, Biden simply says, “I gave the Republicans everything they wanted.” As Hugh Hewitt calls it, it’s a suicide pill for the Republicans.

Senator Lankford, a genuinely good guy, came on Hugh’s show Monday to make his best defense of the Senate bill.

JL: Yeah, let me actually, let me talk you through the language that’s actually there that’s behind that. It actually sets up that it has to be the 18-foot tall or 30-foot tall. It has to be built according to the Trump standards. It has to be built in the Trump locations that they set up in 2019 and 2020. It has to be built to those designs, and there’s only a fraction of that money that’s actually available under the next 10 months. The vast majority of that money is actually moved to the next year. It’s available to the next president to be able to do that construction, and it lines up with the 900-mile agenda that was actually laid out by the Trump administration. So the actual language that’s there around the wall is not only protecting the funding to be able to be there, which is the funding that was about to expire. We recapitalized to make sure it’s actually protected. It’s protected for the next administration. It’s blocked off to be actually real wall construction and to keep this administration from spending that money for environmental remediation as they have used the money for already. They’re spent a billion dollars on environmental remediation. This actually makes sure it’s actual wall construction or repair of existing wall.

This isn’t hard. Former Missouri Senator Jim Talent had the best path forward. It’s an election year. Use that to your advantage. Make The Democrats vote. Offer up a standalone Ukraine funding bill. It’ll either pass or not in the House. It would probably pass in the Senate. Maybe.

Offer up a standalone Israel aid package. It’ll pass in the House. If it doesn’t pass in the Senate, or if Joe Biden doesn’t sign it, it’s because of his anti-Semitic base, and the repercussions are on them.

Speaker Johnson should tell Chuck Schumer you’ve got H.R. 2 on your desk. Write your own standalone border bill if you don’t want to take ours up. But if reconciliation doesn’t come out way, it doesn’t pass, and we’ll crush you on it in November. Make the Democrats vote. Holding one issue hostage to get other things jammed through is age-old Washington parlor game, but it doesn’t help the Republicans in this cycle. Make them vote.

In this version of the Senate bill, if I understand Senator Lankford’s view, it’s that there’s already funding for the wall, but it hasn’t been built by Joe Biden, because Joe Biden’s lawless. So we’re going renew the funding for the wall again, and we know Biden’s lawless, so we’re not even giving him any money to be lawless with and not build the wall again without penalty. We’re saving the money for the next administration, hoping that it’ll be a Republican one. If it’s not, Joe Biden, or eventually Kamala Harris, will have pots of money for the next five years with which to be lawless and redirect.

If Donald Trump were to win, he’d more than likely have a coat tail effect that gives him both houses of Congress, so they could get what they wanted anyway, which is more like H.R. 2, next year. This is a lot of machinations and future promises that actually boils down to rolling the dice on November while giving Joe Biden the gift of sharing the burden of the immigration albatross around his neck. It doesn’t make sense.

It’s better to piece this thing off, force votes to be taken, and let’s have the election on issues, if possible.