PBS News Hour

GEOFF BENNETT: The end of Title 42 is just one of the high-stakes issues on the agenda in Washington this week.

The other is the ongoing showdown over raising the debt ceiling.

For analysis of both, return to our Politics Monday team, Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR.

With a welcome to you both, this is expected to be a consequential week politically.

As we have reported, Title 42 is expected to expire, will expire on Thursday.

That's the Trump era policy that says you can turn migrants away even if they're seeking asylum.

The number of attempted crossings is expected to swell.

The Biden White House says that they are prepared, but they also need more resources.

They need more help from Congress.

Tam, how is the White House preparing for this and then, beyond that, setting expectations with the American people about what's to come?

TAMARA KEITH, National Public Radio: The Biden administration is pushing out a message that the border is not open.

But, as the mayor said, they are competing against human smugglers who have been delivering a message for months that it's open season as Title 42 goes away.

And so they are expecting that it will be challenging, that it will be difficult.

Obviously, that's why they're sending more National Guard to the border area to assist the Border Patrol.

And, politically, it is a real challenge, though political views are so baked in that it's not clear exactly how this will turn out, because Republicans are expecting this to be bad.

They have been saying it's going to be bad.

They are going to continue to push a narrative that this is out of control.

And Democrats, polling would indicate, immigration is not a top issue for them.

It's not a top concern for them, certainly this sort of immigration issue.

But the challenge is, chaos is not great.

Chaos is not great politically for the person in the White House.

And so whether they can make this orderly or not is a very big open question.

And, certainly, someone like Kyrsten Sinema, the senator from Arizona, is raising concern that they're not ready.

GEOFF BENNETT: Yes.

As a matter of fact, we have that sound, if we can play it now.

And I will ask a question the other side.

SEN. KYRSTEN SINEMA (I-AZ): ... years to prepare for this and did not do so.

And our state is going to bear the brunt.

And migrants will be in crisis as soon as next week.

It will be a humanitarian crisis, because we are not prepared.

GEOFF BENNETT: So, how does the White House confront that?

Because immigration, it used to be -- there used to be a partisan split, not so much anymore, not really among Democrats in border states or, in the case of Kyrsten Sinema, an independent in a border state.

AMY WALTER, The Cook Political Report: Yes, Tam is exactly right.

This is a very polarizing issue, not just in Congress, but among voters, in terms of the priority that immigration plays in their view in their vote.

So, Republicans saying this is an absolute top priority, Democrats not as big of a priority, unless you're in a border state.

It's not just Senator Sinema.

The governor of the state of Arizona, also a Democrat, was not quite as pointed as the senator, but basically said, we need more help.

We know there are Democratic mayors around the country saying, we need more federal help.

Obviously, that's what most of these folks are saying, is, the federal government needs to give us more money to be able to prepare for this.

But I do agree we don't know if this issue is going to transcend this very deep divide.

Is this going to turn into what Senator Sinema says is an absolute, abject humanitarian disaster?

Is it a few days where it looks chaotic, but it somehow becomes less chaotic?

Are we going to potentially see violence or other events happening?

That, to me, is the bigger question about whether we can see this politically transcending what we know have been pretty hard-and-fast traditional opinions on these.

(CROSSTALK) TAMARA KEITH: Arizona is not just a border state.

It's a swing state.

AMY WALTER: Yes.

It's a swing state, absolutely.

GEOFF BENNETT: That's true.

Well, on that point, how does the Biden campaign, Tam, keep this from being -- from becoming a competency issue?

TAMARA KEITH: It's an open question.

And one other question that I have that I don't have an answer to is, will the president of the United States step forward and deliver this message that the border is not open?

Or is he going to leave it to the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, focus on the debt ceiling, focus on anything else, and not sort of put the White House stamp on this?

And I think the fact that we haven't seen the president out there is probably an indication that they don't know exactly how this is going to turn out and they don't know whether they want the president's fingerprints on it or not.

GEOFF BENNETT: Let's talk about this new Washington Post/ABC News poll, which finds President Biden's approval rating slipping to a new low.

More Americans than not doubt his mental acuity.

His support against leading GOP challengers is far shakier than at this point four years ago.

Amy, is this poll an outlier or does the White House have reason to be concerned?

Or are both things true?

It's an outlier and they have reason to be concerned?

AMY WALTER: Or they should -- they have reason to be concerned regardless of what this poll says.

But what I think we're seeing in all of the polling, including the Marist/"PBS NewsHour" poll, is that the president's overall approval rating is in a pretty bad place.

Whether it's 41 percent, like in the Marist poll or 39 percent in this poll, this is not where you want to be as an incumbent going into reelection.

In fact, traditionally, a job approval rating is about -- going into an election is about within one to four points of the final vote that that incumbent gets, except what we're also seeing -- this poll didn't show it, but we have seen in polls both in 2022 and most more recently in 2023 people who somewhat disapprove of Biden, so included in that significant group of people say, I don't think he's doing a good job, are actually voting for Biden or voting for Democrats.

So there are people out there who aren't particularly thrilled in the job the president's doing.

This is what Republicans (sic) are counting on, is that the option of Donald Trump is so problematic for these voters who dislike the job that the president's doing that they're willing to support somebody who they don't think is doing a particularly good job.

However -- and this is where Democrats do get worried -- one, does it still work?

It worked in 2022.

Is it still going to work in 2024?

What if Trump's not the nominee?

That's a very different story.

And, number three, are voters going to still turn out?

This has been the message from Democrats now for the last four years.

You have got to turn out.

It's an existential crisis.

If not, Donald Trump's going to be back in the White House.

Abortion laws are going to get passed that are more restrictive.

That's been very mobilizing, but it's been a pretty constant drumbeat now.

GEOFF BENNETT: As President Biden always says, don't compare me to the almighty.

Compare me to the alternative.

Well, in the time that remains, let's talk about the debt ceiling, because President Biden is set to meet tomorrow with the top four congressional leaders.

It strikes me the four of them have not -- or the five of them have not met in their current capacities in person yet.

So this will be their first time meeting in person and their first time meeting in person to talk about the debt.

How is this expected to go, Tam?

TAMARA KEITH: Well, the -- according to White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, don't call this a debt ceiling negotiation.

This is not a negotiation over the debt ceiling.

OK, well, that is the crisis at hand.

But... GEOFF BENNETT: And we're three weeks away from going off the cliff.

TAMARA KEITH: Yes.

The soonest it might happen, the cliff might be June 1, or it might be somewhat later.

But there is no -- there is no vibe from anyone that it's currently in a crisis phase or that they can see said cliff off in the distance.

It -- there is not a sense of urgency.

And this meeting, based on the White House telling, based on congressional telling, it's going to be people talking about what their positions are, which have been well-known for months.

But the chance of a breakthrough seems pretty low.

And what -- the real challenge here is, usually, with one of these sorts of crises, there is - - you can see a face-saving option.

You're like, OK, there's a face-saving option out there.

They will come to it eventually.

They have to do the plumage and the peacocking and all that, and then they will get to the face-saving option.

It's just not clear what the face-saving option is in this case, particularly given that Kevin McCarthy has such a narrow control over the House and the Senate is so narrow and all of this.

It's just not clear how they get out of it just yet.

GEOFF BENNETT: Both sides want to find a way to declare victory.

AMY WALTER: Yes.

GEOFF BENNETT: We're talking about the politics of this.

The economics of this are a whole different conversation.

AMY WALTER: But what's the point, right, Geoff... GEOFF BENNETT: Yes.

AMY WALTER: ... which is that nobody wins in this fight.

GEOFF BENNETT: Right.

AMY WALTER: Now, politically, if we don't go off a cliff, if we don't default on the debt, yes, both sides can come out and say, see, we got what we want.

The other side says, oh, I got what I want.

That's fine.

But I don't know that voters are particularly interested in giving someone the winner tag and some of the loser tag.

Right now, it looks bad for everybody involved in all of this.

And you can see this exhaustion that this gamesmanship, the sort of Kabuki of it, but with the real threat lingering, is the kind of thing that voters say, this is why we check out from politics.

And it's the only way in many cases the minority has leverage to do a lot of the stuff that they want to do.

But, obviously, it comes with a very big price.

GEOFF BENNETT: Well, to give our viewers a sense of the state of play, we have some sound from the Sunday shows that characterizes what you both are talking about.

REP. JODEY ARRINGTON (R-TX): We're not going to give any politician, including the president, a blank check to continue to bankrupt the country.

REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): We have been waiting for months for the Republicans to articulate their position.

They didn't produce a budget.

What they did was produced a ransom note.

GEOFF BENNETT: It can only go up from here, right?

(LAUGHTER) AMY WALTER: Right.

TAMARA KEITH: Well, this is this phase of it.

AMY WALTER: That's right.

TAMARA KEITH: I think that a lot of people may think that this is just a regular old budget crisis, a fight where the government might shut down and we're going to talk about the lights being turned off.

This is different.

The stakes are much higher with a potential debt default.

The global economic stakes are much higher.

But, at the moment, the rhetoric is very much similar to what you would see ahead of a regular old budget fight.

GEOFF BENNETT: Yes.

We got about five seconds left.

AMY WALTER: Concur.

(LAUGHTER) GEOFF BENNETT: OK. AMY WALTER: There we go.

GEOFF BENNETT: Very good.

AMY WALTER: Did that fit?

GEOFF BENNETT: It did.

Amy Walter and Tamara Keith, great to see you all, as always.

TAMARA KEITH: Thank you.