Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) advised President Joe Biden on where to focus efforts to address the migrant crisis at the southern border: the House of Representatives.
On CBS News Face the Nation, Gonzales discussed the twice-failed bipartisan Senate border bill and criticized President Joe Biden for not engaging in conversations with House leadership about a border bill. Gonzales’s district, Texas Congressional District 23, covers a significant portion of Texas’s border with Mexico.
“Now if Joe Biden wants to secure this thing long term, I think he needs to stop looking at the Senate for a solution and look to the House,” Gonzales stated. “I think there’s opportunities; HR-2 is a good start.”
If President Biden wants action on border security from Congress, “he needs to stop looking at the Senate for a solution and look to the House,” GOP border @RepTonyGonzales tells @margbrennan. “The president has not had any real conversations with anyone in the House.” pic.twitter.com/oBiEFN0nOf
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) May 26, 2024
Gonzales claimed Biden had not “really” discussed the matter with anyone in the House.
“The president has not had any real conversations with anyone in the House,” Gonzales reiterated.
He noted that the Biden administration had been in talks with Senate leadership regarding the bipartisan border bill but suggested it might be more beneficial for the President to engage with House leadership.
“The Senate, yes, they’ve [the Biden administration] had discussions, but in the House, they’ve given no attention to it. This is different than in the past,” Gonzales noted.
The House, which is experiencing historically high levels of unproductiveness, has not recently voted on any border legislation.
“The House is where I believe you start if you truly want to solve it. If you want to make it about politics and blame someone else, you hold it in the Senate and claim ‘we’re trying, we’re doing the best we can.’”
Last week, Senate Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) put the bipartisan Senate border bill up for a second vote after the first one failed. Many saw this move as a political gesture as it failed once more.
“Today is not a bill. Today is a prop. Today is a political messaging exercise,” Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) said before the vote. “That doesn’t help us as a country.”
Schumer stated he wanted to put the bill up for a vote to highlight former President Donald Trump’s efforts to thwart the bill the first time.
“People want us to get things done. People want us to come together. And when they hear that the only reason Republicans backed away from this bill is not that it wasn’t strong enough, but that Donald Trump said he wanted chaos at the border, they don’t like that,” Schumer remarked on Thursday on the Senate floor.
