'Today is a breakthrough day,' Sen. Chuck Schumer said Thursday. The border deal that almost failed

Sen. Chuck Schumer spent Tuesday privately urging President Barack Obama and the entire Democratic caucus to just be patient — a border security deal they could accept was still within reach.

But after a testy, 45-minute call that night with a lead Republican negotiator of a possible compromise, Schumer could no longer follow his own advice.


The New York Democrat began to lose hope. Rather than deliver immigration reform with the 70-plus-vote show of force that Schumer had hyped so often, Democrats and the Gang of Eight would have to scratch and scrape their way to a filibuster-proof majority.

And yet, less than 24 hours later, they had a deal.

The answer to their problem turned out to be simple: Throw money at it.

( PHOTOS: At a glance: The Senate immigration deal)

The Congressional Budget Office issued a cost analysis late Tuesday predicting that the reform bill would trim the deficit by almost $1 trillion over the next two decades. Schumer’s top immigration aide suggested senators could funnel some of those savings into border security.

And by Wednesday afternoon, Republican negotiators led by North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven and Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker had dropped their demand to make the path to citizenship for country’s 11 million undocumented immigrants contingent upon the government achieving a 90 percent apprehension rate along the border. In return, they secured a staggering $30 billion for what is now being called a “border surge.”

“Frankly they ended up having to give more,” said Hoeven, who had the contentious phone call with Schumer.

( Also on POLITICO: 70 votes now possible in immigration deal)

The Gang of Eight, the White House and Republican senators still need to resolve differences over restricting immigrant access to government benefits.

But the agreement on border security eases passage next week of the overall bill and renews hopes among the Gang of Eight that it is closing in on an improbable, overwhelmingly bipartisan victory that few would’ve predicted only six months ago.

“Today,” Schumer said from the Senate floor Thursday, “is a breakthrough day.”

Obama has had little role in the Senate debate thus far, intentionally. But at the height of the talks Tuesday, the president weighed in with Schumer from Air Force One while traveling through Europe.

( Also on POLITICO: Gang of Eight introduces 'border surge')

Over a shaky line — they had to be reconnected twice — Obama told Schumer that the 90 percent trigger was unacceptable. Schumer said they were trying to find a different benchmark, and Obama told him to keep working toward an agreement.

The fact that the deal was reached in just hours after both sides were ready to break off talks underscored the political need for passing a bill in the Senate with a strong bipartisan majority. Democrats were eager to quell the growing perception that the bill was weak on the border, in the hopes of pushing the House into action. And Republicans, struggling to right their woes with Hispanic voters, were eager to find a bill that gave them sufficient political cover on the border — while appeasing their business allies hungry for an immigration law.

Money broke the impasse — more money than Democrats, Republicans and veterans of past immigration fights could have ever imagined. The original Gang of Eight bill included $6.5 billion for border security, and they thought that was an extraordinary, even unnecessary, investment after years of infrastructure and manpower buildup along the Southwest border.

( Also on POLITICO: Bill O'Reilly backs immigration deal)

Now, the government may spend $30 billion to double the number of border agents to 40,000, guarantee the completion of a 700-mile fence along the Southern border, and bulk up the country’s arsenal of drones, sensors and other technologies.

It would dump more money and resources on the border than Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) envisioned under his tough amendment that spurred the Gang of Eight into pursuing an alternative.

“We have practically militarized the border,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a member of the Gang of Eight, said proudly. “If this amendment holds together and it passes as currently constructed, border security will have been achieved at a level that nobody would have thought possible a month ago.”

( Also on POLITICO: Border security amendment delayed until Friday)

Schumer described the additional agents as a “virtual human fence.”

“The border patrol will have the capacity to deploy an armed agent 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to stand guard every thousand feet, all the way from San Diego, Calif., to Brownsville, Texas,” Schumer said.

A deal like the one reached Thursday didn’t seem possible more than a week ago.

Just as the Senate opened debate on the bill, Schumer, Graham and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) were growing increasingly concerned about the momentum behind Cornyn’s border plan, which would have required the government to meet the 90 percent apprehension rate.

A surprise embrace from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) had made the Cornyn amendment the leading choice of conservatives demanding tighter enforcement measures. And the longer it hung out there without an alternative, the more likely it would become the baseline demand for Republicans.

McCain and Schumer launched a coordinated attack from the floor last Wednesday.

Their critique: the Cornyn plan called for 10,000 agents and would cost as much as $25 billion. Cornyn disputed both figures, but McCain and Schumer railed against the amendment for adding to the deficit and assuming that manpower could solve the problem.

“The fact is that we can get this border secured, and the answer, my friends, as is proposed in the Cornyn amendment, that we hire 10,000 more border patrol is not a recognition of what we really need,” McCain said. “What we really need is technology.”

Graham, meanwhile, began looking around for Republicans who wanted a Cornyn alternative. Corker and Hoeven stepped up. And later that day, Corker’s office convened a meeting with almost a dozen interested GOP Senate offices, including Mark Kirk (Ill.), Susan Collins (Maine), Johnny Isakson (Ga.) and Roger Wicker (Miss.).

Schumer told Corker that he would consider what the group came up with as long as it didn’t make the path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants contingent upon a metric that could be left up to interpretation by future administrations. In short, they had to drop their demand that the border patrol achieve a 90 percent apprehension rate before immigrants could apply for legal permanent residence.

But the Corker-Hoeven talks remained deadlocked for days.

Democrats began growing impatient that Schumer would cave.

He fielded a call Tuesday from Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. He urged the Democratic caucus during their luncheon that day to give the negotiators some time.

But Schumer’s optimism began to dim later that night as he tried to convince Hoeven during their phone call that the 90 percent trigger wouldn’t work.

They got nowhere. Hoeven wouldn’t back away from keeping the 90 percent apprehension rate. That was too much for Schumer, who believed the pathway to citizenship would be unattainable under Hoeven’s approach.

Get creative and find another solution, Schumer suggested to Hoeven. And the two men ended the call, with no deal in sight — and the time running out in the Senate floor debate.

“It was a pretty tough conversation because they were stuck on the trigger,” Schumer said Thursday.

The breakthrough they needed came that afternoon from an unlikely source: the nonpartisan congressional scorekeeper known as the CBO.

The CBO issued its long-awaited cost analysis and concluded that the bill would trim the deficit by $175 billion over the next decade and $700 billion in the second decade. The better-than-expected savings gave negotiators room to pour even more money into the border. The promise of resources — rather than an apprehension rate — would be the trigger.

Schumer pitched the idea to Graham and Corker in the meeting Wednesday morning. They liked it and shared it with a broader group as the day wore on, picking up support from others in the Gang of Eight and the Republican conference. In particular, Rubio and others in the GOP liked the proposal to complete the 700-mile fence along the Southern border.

Confident that a deal was at hand, Schumer called White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough on Wednesday night to describe the outlines.

“I don’t think you’re going to have a problem with this,” Schumer said at the top of the call.

He was right.

CORRECTION: A spokesman for Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said his office did not participate in a meeting convened last week by Sen. Bob Corker’s (R-Tenn.) office with Republicans interested in working on an alternative to the Cornyn plan. The story was also updated to reflect that the savings from the CBO analysis were estimated at almost $1 trillion.

CORRECTION: Corrected by: Emily Howell @ 06/21/2013 10:01 AM CORRECTION: A spokesman for Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said his office did not participate in a meeting convened last week by Sen. Bob Corker’s (R-Tenn.) office with Republicans interested in working on an alternative to the Cornyn plan. The story was also updated to reflect that the savings from the CBO analysis were estimated at almost $1 trillion.