Biden's budget director rejects Johnson's pitch for new border talks: 'That is not serious'

Shortly after reports emerged that Speaker Mike Johnson floated negotiating directly with the White House on border policy, President Joe Biden's budget director Shalanda Young panned the idea.

Young argued that if Johnson is serious about addressing the surge of migrants at the southern border, he would reach out to the Senate negotiators who have been working towards a solution for weeks.

“It’s a long trip down to the White House to do something that could be done right next door” in the Senate, she said at a breakfast with reporters Friday morning sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor.

Johnson raised the idea of reaching out to the White House directly during a call with House Republican freshmen, according to a person familiar with the call. Johnson said he was "weighing it" but acknowledged that the Senate has the pen, that person added. Punchbowl News first reported the details of the call.

Johnson is “a fellow Louisianan, so I’m going to use a charitable thought here, but that is not serious,” Young added.

Several House Republicans have called for shutting down the government if their border demands are not met. Many of them want Democratic leaders to agree to the functional equivalent of the partisan H.R. 2, a bill packed with conservative priorities that Democrats have widely rejected.

That rhetoric on the border has Young increasingly worried about keeping the government funded beyond back-to-back deadlines on Jan. 19 and Feb. 2.

The trip Johnson and dozens of other House Republicans took to the border this week “left me with more concerns about where they’re headed,” Young said. “Don’t mark me down as optimistic this morning, especially after some of the remarks I’ve seen over the last couple of days.”

In exactly two weeks, Congress will face the first of two government shutdown deadlines. From her decades of experience as a top appropriations aide in the House, Young noted the difficulty of even drafting the first tranche of spending bills by that funding cliff, since congressional leaders still haven't struck a deal on a framework agreement setting overall funding totals.

Democrats are insisting on a non-defense spending figure of about $773 billion and they’re amenable to Covid aid rescissions and IRS cuts, according to a person familiar with those funding negotiations.

"I've seen a few of these rodeos before,” said the budget director. “And it is tight, to say the least, just from a mechanical standpoint, how quickly can appropriators write to finish these first four bills by January 19."

Caitlin Emma contributed to this report.