A bipartisan effort in Congress to control immigration enforcement tactics after officers killed two people in Minneapolis is faltering ahead of a Friday deadline to fund the Department of Homeland Security.
It would not be the first time recently that lawmakers pledged to find consensus only for negotiations to fall apart.
A month ago, Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, was projecting confidence that a bipartisan group of lawmakers was nearing a deal to restore lapsed health insurance subsidies.
The enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies expired at the end of last year, despite a majority of Americans in favor of Congress renewing them, according to polling from the nonprofit KFF.
"We're in the red zone," Moreno told reporters. "But that does not mean a touchdown. It could mean a 95-yard fumble."
In the end, there was no touchdown. Moreno told NPR last week that the talks fizzled. He blamed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., for shutting them down in order to keep pummeling Republicans over premium costs.
"Shouldn't we be here trying to figure out how to solve problems rather than trying to score political points for the purposes of the next election?" Moreno asked.
Democrats dispute that characterization, saying Republicans blew up the effort by inserting anti-abortion language in a provision on health savings accounts.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., says the effort was doomed to fail — not because of a lack of compromise but because Democrats lost leverage when a few voted to end the shutdown last fall.
"I was pretty confident the minute we gave up that we weren't going to get it," Murphy said.
A bipartisan agreement to address ICE tactics has yet to materialize
Congress' ability to act is again being tested, this time by the aggressive actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection agents in Minnesota and elsewhere.
As with the subsidies, public outcry pushed a number of Republicans and Democrats to pledge to do something — in this case, reining in enforcement tactics. Top lawmakers initially signaled optimism that they could find common ground on topics such as requiring that officers wear body cameras.
But within days, that rosiness dissipated. Now Democrats are again threatening to withhold their votes for the measure, risking a shutdown of the department after Friday, unless Republican lawmakers and the White House agree to the reforms they want.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has repeatedly blamed Democrats, saying they imposed an unrealistic timeline and then dawdled before producing a laundry list of nonstarters, like banning agents from wearing masks or requiring judicial warrants for enforcement operations in homes.
Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., called the White House's initial response to their demands insufficient and continue to insist that their proposals are reasonable and targeted.
Asked why bipartisan negotiations keep crumbling, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine., who has participated in negotiations on the subsidies and immigration, said Congress does successfully collaborate, like negotiating and passing bipartisan government funding bills worth more than $1 trillion.
"I don't know how you could possibly describe that as crumbling," Collins told NPR. "That's Congress reasserting its power of the purse."
Little incentive to compromise
Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat who represented North Dakota in the Senate from 2013 through 2018, spent hours in rooms with centrist senators like Collins trying to resolve a standoff over the debt ceiling.
She says bipartisan negotiations have always been a high-wire act, particularly amid a national crisis.
"When the shock wears off, then all of a sudden everyone goes back to their corners," Heitkamp said.
A gang of eight lawmakers tried, but failed, to pass comprehensive immigration reform in 2013. Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Tim Scott, R-S.C., made progress on policing reform after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020, but came up empty-handed.
Heitkamp, who until recently directed the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics, says many lawmakers today see even less incentive to compromise as politics becomes more tribal.
"The base on both sides, their willingness to reward compromise is greatly diminished," she said. "If you look at the Senate of old, there were a lot of egos in that room and a lot of people who made up their own minds, and now what you have is people who are willing to be cogs in the wheel."
How inaction diminishes public trust
When Congress promises to act and does not, Heitkamp says, that erodes public trust in the institution's ability to respond to problems.
Sixty-six percent of Americans report having not very much or no trust in Congress, according to a September Gallup survey.
Of the 14 Arizona swing voters who participated in a Feb. 10 online focus group organized by NPR and the Swing Voter Project, only two said they had confidence that Congress would take any action on the immigration-related proposals being discussed.
Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., says she is thinking about public trust as she helps lead the current negotiations on immigration enforcement.
"Anybody can identify a problem," Britt said in an interview. "We have to be people that are looking for solutions. Treating people with dignity and respect allows you to have tough conversations. I think we owe it to the people we serve to actually find that pathway forward."
Britt panned Democrats' initial demands last week as a Christmas list, though talks are ongoing and, unlike the fight over the health subsidies, the White House is involved and negotiating directly with Democrats.
Last fall, Britt helped strike a deal with those handful of Democrats who voted to end the 43-day shutdown — including Sen. Tim Kaine.
Kaine, D-Va., says bipartisan action is still possible, but the reality is that on the most fraught issues, it is extremely difficult.
"On health care, on immigration, the parties are in fundamentally very different places," he said. "And so that means I go into any negotiation on a topic like this: high hopes, low expectations."
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