Joe Biden's 'the buck stops somewhere else' tour continues

 If anything is obvious about Joe Biden, it's that anything negative that happens during his administration is someone else's fault. One of Biden's biggest ongoing failures is illegal immigration and border security. Speaking at the U.S. Conference of Mayors winter meeting, Biden dishonestly said "The first bill I introduced was a comprehensive reform legislation on immigration. But because of some in the Congress, they refused to consider it. They found it a better issue to campaign on than an issue to solve."

It's indisputable that the first bill he sent up to Congress was a comprehensive immigration bill. What I'm disputing is the suggestion that Republicans had the ability to stop the bill. For 2021-22, aka the 117th Congress, Democrats had control of the House and Senate. There likely were enough Senate Republicans who would've co-sponsored the bill, thereby defeating any attempt to filibuster the bill. That means Biden's comprehensive immigration reform bill was stopped by Democrats. It wasn't stopped by Republicans.

I wrote in this post that "I write this to illustrate how Washington keeps getting things wrong with immigration. I wrote this to show why there's no such thing as comprehensive immigration reform. There are really 2 steps to fixing immigration." The first step is fixing the crisis. That doesn't require legislative action. Honestly, it requires enforcing existing immigration laws. That's exclusively the executive branch's responsibility. Congress isn't responsible for giving the DEA, CBP or DHS their marching orders.

Later, I wrote this:

Once the wall is built and the new border patrol, DEA and ICE agents are in place, then Republicans can join Democrats in fixing the problem. Once the border is secure and Trump's wall is built, then Republicans will be willing to fix things like asylum reform, guest worker programs and streamlining the citizenship process.

Biden knows that the buck stops at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. It doesn't stop on Capitol Hill.

Hours after the president spoke, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced that there were more than 251,000 migrant encounters at the southern border in December, surpassing the 179,253 encountered in Dec. 2021, and the 73,994 encountered in Dec. 2020.

Jonathan Turley summarized things beautifully in this article:

The comments on Thursday were classic Biden. He first deflected by using the California victims. He then denied any real responsibility. Despite the appointment of a special counsel to investigate his conduct, he shrugged off the entire matter as something akin to finding a neighbor's borrowed hammer from 2017 in his garage: "We found a handful of documents were filed in the wrong place. We immediately turned them over to the Archives and the Justice Department... I think you're going to find there's nothing there. I have no regrets. I’m following what the lawyers have told me they want me to do. It’s exactly what we’re doing. There’s no there, there."

Of course, there is also a special counsel "there."

If the special counsel doesn't indict Biden, Republicans should raise the biggest stink in DC history, questioning why the special counsel didn't highlight why the Counsel didn't investigate where the documents were stored before the Penn-Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement opened in 2018. Further, let's ask why Biden didn't take the mishandling of these TS-SCI documents seriously. This afternoon, Michael Mukasey talked about his first trip into a SCIF. He said that he took copious notes on the proper handling of TS-SCI documents. When the session ended, he took his notes and started towards the door. The people running the SCIF took his notes and labeled them TS-SCI.

Considering that level of scrutiny, how did Joe Biden get those documents out of the White House? How did he store TS-SCI documents in his Wilmington, DE garage or in the UPenn-Biden Center? There's lots of details that we haven't discussed. It's essential to get those questions answered. Otherwise, it's just another Democrat whitewash.

Today's must-viewing: