Monday marks the start of a pivotal week for Joe Biden and one he can’t afford to get wrong. The Afghanistan withdrawal debacle has left Biden unable to afford another major misstep as the 2024 election draw closer. The two huge problems which converge this week are a possible default on the national and the end of the Title 42 border restrictions. Biden will meet with congress on Tuesday to iron out a deal to avoid defaulting on the national debt and on Thursday a massive surge of migrants is expected when the border restrictions are officially lifted.
Last week, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced that the U.S. is set to hit the debt ceiling sooner than expected. She recently stated the country could the reach ceiling as early as June 1st. Republicans and Democrats in congress have to pass a resolution. Time is running down for an agreement to be made and Joe Biden has made it clear he will not sign off on the current terms offered by Republicans. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has made it clear that he he is ready to sit down with Biden and come up with a resolution but for weeks Biden did not respond.
The next task for Biden will be managing a surge at the border when Title 42 ends on Thursday as COVID-19 restrictions are lifted. Now under Biden’s control, the law keeping millions of illegal migrants from entering the country for nearly three years will disintegrate leaving the lines on our country’s border blurry.
At the beginning of the month, Biden preactivley sent 1,500 active-duty troops to the border to prepare for the migrant influx. Currently, there are already 2,500 National Guard troops at the border, so this addition isn’t anything new for the country. Though it was made clear during the early May announcement that these troops would not be enforcing the law, they would instead serve administrative roles to essentially free up resources at the Department of Homeland Security so that Customs and Border Protection agents can operate in the field.
Will the extra troops be enough to stem the tide of illegal border crossings? For many, the simpler and more effective option would have been to write up a new set of border restrictions so that the burden was not shifted to law enforcement. Either way, Biden has created a set of unwanted problems and Americans a less than confident in his ability to solve them.
