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WASHINGTON — Sen. Mitt Romney said he is "deeply disappointed" with the GOP's decision to walk away from the $118 billion border deal, which took months to negotiate.
"Politics used to be the art of the possible. Now it's the art of the impossible," he told HuffPost reporter Igor Bobic.
"Meaning, let's put forward proposals that can't possibly pass so we can say to our respective bases, look how I'm fighting for you," Romney, a Utah Republican, said.
The Senate will likely move to vote on the bill, which includes funds for border security and foreign aid as well as immigration reform, this week, but it likely doesn't have enough Republican support in either of the chambers, with many conservatives calling the proposal "dead on arrival."
On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell admitted to reporters, "we have no real chance here to make a law," as Politico reported. He said the bill was not supported by GOP senators or House Republican leadership.
Over two weeks ago, Romney said former President Donald Trump, who has criticized the bipartisan deal, was to blame for dividing Republicans over the border bill, as the Deseret News previously reported.
"I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump. And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn't want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is really appalling," he told reporters, as posted on X by CNN's Manu Raju.
"But the reality is that we have a crisis at the border, the American people are suffering as a result of what's happening at the border," he said, adding, that Trump's strategy is to allow the Republicans to "save that problem," and let him "take credit for solving it later."
Amid the negotiations back in December, he said, "We're at a rate of incursions into the country of about four million a year. That's larger than the population of 24 of our states."
"So, we want to solve that to secure the border," Romney said.
