South Dakota’s Dusty Johnson calls southern border an “abject disaster”

South Dakota's lone House Representative Dusty Johnson said border security is his top priority.

The third-term Republican Congressman, who helped author stopgap funding legislation that would have included stricter border security measures, called the situation an "abject disaster."

"We've tried to tell the Senate and the White House that H.R. 2 is what's needed to secure the border — that now is not the time for half-measures — and they have not been as responsive as we'd like them to be," Johnson told the Journal Friday. "But it's absolutely, totally indefensible what's going on at the southern border, and if we don't address that, shame on us."

H.R. 2, which passed the House in 2023 without any Democratic support, features provisions like requiring the use of an E-Verify system for employers to confirm the legal status of their employees, changing the process to seek asylum, and building a 900-mile section of border wall while providing funding to border forces being set up in states like Texas.

Funding for increased security at the southern border remains a contentious issue between congressional Republicans and the Biden Administration and is the key stalling point in passing Biden's $110 billion legislation that would provide aid to Ukraine, Israel and other U.S. allies.

Last weekend, President Biden said he'd shut the border down now if he had the authority, according to reporting from the Associated Press. That authority would be activated when the number of crossings reach an extreme level. The authority would shut down the asylum process for those crossing illegally, but trade would continue, along with crossings by citizens and legal residents, AP said.

AP reported the number of crossings in the legislation is 5,000 over a five-day average. The text of that legislation has yet to be released.

South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds previously told the Journal those numbers are "misinformation." Johnson agreed with his Senate counterpart and said he hasn't seen the text of the legislation or been briefed on it.

"Right now, it's clear to me that H.R. 2 would secure the border," he said. "Anything short of that, I would really need to do some serious investigating to make sure that it would actually do what people think it would do."

The latest reporting from AP indicates the Senate plans to hold a test vote on the bill Wednesday. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-L.A.) called the legislation a "non-starter," telling ABC News even without seeing the text of the legislation, he doesn't believe it will go far enough to suffice his Republican colleagues.

With an estimated price tag of more than a trillion dollars, the farm bill encompasses funding for everything from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to protections for America's farmers and ranchers.

Congress passed a continuing resolution on Nov. 15, which averted a government shutdown and extended the deadline to pass a new farm bill through Sept. 2024. The farm bill gets rehashed every five years.

Crop insurance and other safety nets for agriculture remain a priority for Johnson and his Senate counterparts this session. Things like reference prices that help determine when insurance mechanisms are triggered need to be tweaked, Johnson said.

"Sometimes people think that folks just get money for being farmers [and] ranchers...that's not really true anymore, if it ever was," he said.

Building meat processing capabilities outside of the "Big Four" — which include Tyson Foods, JBS, Cargill and Marfrig — is another focus, and Johnson has introduced multiple pieces of legislation to address the imbalance against smaller producers. Johnson's Butcher Block Act was reintroduced in the House this month — a bipartisan bill to establish a grant and loan program within the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture for new and expanding processes to drive competition. The USDA implemented a pilot program mirroring Johnson's legislation in July 2021, and the bill passed the House in 2022 as part of a larger legislative package.

He's also introduced bipartisan legislation to protect American farmland from foreign-owned investment with the Farmland Security Act of 2023, and co-authored a bill that would require uniformity in pesticide labeling for agricultural products.

Elections

Johnson will seek reelection this year for his fourth term in the House. His team is currently working to obtain the signatures necessary to get on the ballot.

A conservative Aberdeen businessman, Toby Doeden, has launched a committee to explore running against Johnson. 

“Dusty is a career politician who campaigns on conservative values, but as soon as he’s elected, he scampers back to Washington, where he acts like a liberal, talks like a liberal, and worst of all, votes like a liberal," Doeden wrote in a press release last month.