House GOP to Senate Dems: Your border vote is political 'cover'

House Republicans are already deriding the Senate's bid for a vote on bipartisan immigration legislation as a political ploy that's doomed — in the extremely unlikely event it even reaches their chamber.

"Leader Schumer is trying give [sic] his vulnerable members cover by bringing a vote on a bill which has already failed once in the Senate because it would actually codify many of the disastrous Biden open border policies that created this crisis in the first place,” Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team said in a statement. “Should it reach the House, the bill would be dead on arrival.”

That Senate immigration bill, forged over months of bipartisan negotiations as part of a broader package of foreign aid that subsequently passed on its own, will get a floor vote this week, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced on Sunday.

The House GOP leaders’ opposition should not come as a surprise. They have long expressed a preference for their chamber-passed more hardline immigration measure, H.R. 2, which has been a nonstarter for congressional Democrats.

“If Senate Democrats were actually serious about solving the problem and ending the border catastrophe, they would bring up H.R. 2 and pass it this week,” the GOP leaders said in their statement.

However, no one on the Hill expects the Senate's border deal to make it across the Capitol to the House. A handful of Senate progressives are expected to oppose their own leaders' move to call up the negotiated bill — viewing its policy as too extreme — and Republicans have indicated they view the floor action as a move to boost endangered Democratic incumbents who are getting hammered by their opponents on immigration.