Senators Graham and Sinema spar over border bill

Sens. Lindsey Graham and Kyrsten Sinema clashed on the Senate floor Thursday during a discussion on the failed border security deal.

Sinema, I-Ariz., questioned why Graham, R-S.C., voted to block the bill from coming up for debate on the Senate floor.

“I voted no because I didn’t see a process in place or willingness by my Democratic colleagues to allow me to express I think it could be better,” Graham responded.

“Here is what I’m saying: This has been a half-*** effort to deal with border security. … To the people in the House, we have not really tried hard to secure the border. We took a well-meaning product — people worked really hard. I applaud you and others for coming out with a product that I thought had a lot of good things in it, but not enough for me. So now I can’t even vote; we’ve closed out the border debate,” he added.

When peppered with additional requests by Sinema to yield for questions, Graham responded “no” several times.

“I want a cap on parole. … This has not been a real effort to find border security in a bipartisan way. … You don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting it through the House, because we took the border issue and we didn’t address it the way it should have been.”

Later, when asked by Sinema if he was aware of the process for offering amendments in the United States Senate, Graham retorted: “Are you aware of the fact that people routinely vote not to proceed until they get some kind of understanding of what’s coming next? And here’s what came next: not one effort to sit down and talk to the 41 of us. ‘What would you like to change your vote?’ The fix is in. … We’ll jump right into Ukraine; we’re going to do it this weekend. We did the minimum on the border when it comes to changing a bill that has many good qualities, so you’re not convincing me I’m the problem.

“I’ve seen this. You have not. I’ve seen a debate on this floor with Sen. [Michael] Bennet [D-Colo.] where we got the c*** kicked out of us for weeks. We gave everybody who didn’t like what we did a chance to come down here and say their side of the story and kick us in the a** — and that’s the way the process works. We did not do that here, so you’re losing votes on Ukraine. You’re losing me in terms of trying to fix this problem, because I can’t tell our House colleagues that you should accept this product because we have not done what I think needs to be done to try to secure our border.”