Republican Sen. James Lankford, Okla., disputed House Speaker Mike Johnson's, R-La., claim he was intentionally excluded from bipartisan negotiations over border and military funding bills, alleging that Johnson chose not to partake in the Senate talks, according to CNN congressional reporter Manu Raju.
During a Sunday appearance on NBC New's "Meet the Press" Sunday, Johnson claimed that he was never offered a briefing, instead only receiving tips from individual senators. Lankford told Raju, however, that Johnson had been invited to the Senate negotiations and asked "early on" whether he wanted "to be engaged on this," but decided not to participate.
“He said the House has already spoken,” Lankford recalled of Johnson, according to Raju. The House's response, Raju clarified, was House Republican bill, HR-2, "which Senate Democrats call a non-starter."
Lankford also told the correspondent that Johnson was "loosely briefed" on the negotiations after declining to participate. The bipartisan border bill the Oklahoma senator co-authored has been run rife with criticism as Republicans vowed to prevent a vote on it, including Johnson's assertion that it will be "dead on arrival" in the House. The bill's text was released publicly Sunday evening, with the border security portion — which also included billions in funding to Ukraine and Israel — of the legislation amounting to around 250 pages, Mediaite reports.
Lankford defended the bill during an appearance on Fox News Monday morning, first responding to pushback from Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, that "no self-respecting senator" should agree to vote on a 370-page proposal this week.
“It’s interesting that he said he’s already opposed to it,” Lankford said. “He needs three weeks to be able to read it, but he’s already opposed to it. So again, people have got to be able to read it and go through it themselves. Don’t just go off a Facebook post somewhere what the bill says.”
“The key aspect of this, again, is are we, as Republicans, going to have press conferences and complain the borders bad and then intentionally leave it open after the worst month in American history in December?” Lankford added, addressing his GOP colleagues at large. “Now we’ve got to actually determine, are we going to just complain about things? Are we going to actually address and then change as many things as we can?”
