Zelenskyy gets one last chance to convince Senate to cut a deal

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will get one last chance to prevail on senators to cut a deal on funding Ukraine’s defense against Russia before the chamber is scheduled to go home for the holidays.

Zelenskyy is scheduled to address all senators at a Tuesday morning meeting, according to a Senate leadership aide. The Senate is struggling to finish a deal that would marry Ukraine funding with new border restrictions, and Zelenskyy’s address may help prevail on senators in both parties to finish the job.

Senate Republicans last week rejected a standalone aid package that lacked a border deal, and Zelenskyy canceled a discussion with senators at a closed briefing that devolved into a partisan fight in his absence — developments that did not help the prospects for an agreement.

Now Zelenskyy’s trip to Washington will give one last boost to negotiators who are clearly deadlocked on the border piece. And perhaps he will be able to convince the Senate that more money can’t wait until next year.

The border talks appeared stuck on Sunday. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) charged that Republicans, led by Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, are making unrealistic demands of Democrats. Though both parties are now talking, it’s unclear how much progress ongoing border talks between senators have made as of late — if any.

“Right now, Republican demands are unreasonable,” Murphy said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “They don’t actually get Democratic votes. If I were a cynic, I would say that Republicans have decided to tie support for Ukraine to immigration reform, because they want Ukraine aid to fail. But I’m not a cynic. And so we are still trying to resolve some pretty big differences that remain.”

There’s not much time, either. The Senate is scheduled to break for the holidays at the end of the week, and although Lankford is advocating to delay the recess, negotiators may need to show tangible progress to do so. The Senate is not expected to return until Jan. 8, and Congress will also have to confront government shutdown deadlines in January and February.

Murphy and Lankford have been engaged in border negotiations in the Senate for nearly a month. Republicans have conditioned their support for a $106 billion supplemental spending bill moving through the Senate on striking a deal on border policy changes. The supplemental includes aid for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, in addition to money for the border.

Initial negotiations left Senate Democrats and Republicans saying they were too far apart, but the group continued discussions last week. On Thursday, POLITICO obtained details of Senate Republicans’ latest border proposal, which includes a ban on class-based “parole” and the revival of a form of Title 42 expulsion authorities, among other efforts.

But some of those demands have already been previously rejected by Senate Democrats — and some Democratic lawmakers remain altogether upset that border policy is being negotiated under these circumstances.

However, Murphy on Sunday expressed some openness to striking a deal on asylum claims, which Republicans have hoped to rein in. The Connecticut senator said Democrats will remain against anything that shuts down the border to people “legitimately” seeking asylum in the United States, but that there could be room for “tightening some of the rules, so that you don’t have 10,000 people arriving a day.”

Murphy added he expects the White House to get more involved in Senate border talks this week, which an increasing number of senators have called for. But he stopped short of forecasting whether the president himself will be stepping into the arena.

Lankford, meanwhile, has remained resistant to separating border policy changes from the larger supplemental, even as time risks running out for other parts of the bill, like Ukraine aid. Senate GOP leadership has argued border security is a critical facet of national security — and therefore fits into the portfolio of this supplemental package.

“We can do two things at once for the United States of America. … We can’t do everything on the border. But we can do the things to actually begin to control the border so that the United States is in control of our boundaries and not the cartels,” Lankford said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

When asked about the latest reported asks from the GOP, Lankford pushed back on the details, stating, “There are several things that I have proposed on that, some things that I haven’t.”