After a week of publicly rebuking Congressional Republicans for killing a bipartisan border policy deal, President Joe Biden on Friday used a convening of governors at the White House to try a new tactic to appeal to those on Capitol Hill: urging state leaders to put pressure on their members of Congress to act. 

“You deal with this every day, some you deal with it every single day. You have real skin in the game,” Biden told governors from around the country on Friday. “So if this matters to you and matters to your state, tell your members of Congress that are standing in the way – show a little spine, pass the bipartisan security bill.”

Biden later told governors privately that he was looking into actions he could take himself without Congress. 

And the president on Friday deployed the same pressure strategy urging the House to take up the Senate-passed foreign aid bill, which includes aid to Ukraine, Israel and more and was originally attached to the border deal. 

“Urge your congressional representatives to force this bill to be brought up to prove America can be relied on,” Biden said after marking the two-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Saturday. 

Biden’s plea came during a meeting of governors who are convening on the nation's capital this weekend for their annual winter meeting. The president brought together the state leaders for an event featuring remarks from him, Vice President Kamala Harris and first lady Jill Biden in the White House’s East Room on Friday before meeting with them privately.  

In his speech, Biden commended the governors for focusing on fixing problems rather than “how many partisan points we score,” going on to praise his own commitment to being “a president for all Americans.” 

“In fact, we’ve invested more in all we’ve passed in red states than we have in blue states,” Biden said. “That’s a fact. Billions of dollars more that we’ve passed was invested in red states than blue states.” 

First lady Jill Biden got in on the politics as well, offering a rebuke of Congress for often being “mired in gridlock.”

“This room shows the nation something different and I wish that the lawmakers on the hill would follow your lead. You show that we can turn down the volume, stop the shouting and actually listen to one another,” the first lady said in her remarks. 

The president went on to specifically highlight his work with the governors of Wisconsin and Minnesota to rebuild the Blatnik Bridge as well as the governors of Kentucky and Ohio on the Brent Spence Companion Bridge. He praised California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s work on the high speed rail in the Golden State. 

“Multiple presidents and multiple governors promised to get the Brent Spence Companion bridge built and this is the group that is delivering,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said in an interview with Spectrum News on Friday. 

“About 3% of the country’s GDP goes across that bridge every year, so it is critical not just for our states but for the national economy,” Beshear added. “And now, with help from the federal government, we are going to build that companion bridge and we are going to do it without tolls.”

On the border, Biden told governors that laws and resources over time have not “kept up” with our immigration system, leading to a “broken” one. 

“Doing nothing is not an option,” Biden told them. 

The Senate dropped a border policy deal that a bipartisan group of senators and the White House spent weeks negotiating after Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, came out in opposition of the agreement. 

Despite the GOP originally insisting border changes be tied to foreign aid, the upper chamber last week passed a $95 billion dollar package providing aid to Ukraine, Israel, the Indo-Pacific and more without border policy changes. The foreign assistance bill now hinges on the GOP-controlled House, where its prospects look rocky. 

In private, following his public remarks, Biden told the governors he was exploring executive orders he could take on the border in the absence of action from Congress, the National Governors Association chair and vice chair, Govs. Spencer Cox of Utah and Jared Polis of Colorado told reporters after the meeting. 

“He did say that he has been working with his attorneys, trying to understand what executive action would be upheld in the courts and would be constitutional and that he seemed a little frustrated that he was not getting answers from attorneys that he felt he could take the kind of actions that he wanted to,” Cox said.

He added when governors told the president he needs to do more, Biden would say “my attorneys tell me I can’t do more.”

Polis said the president mentioned that Trump took some actions on the border that were overturned by federal courts. 

“There was a frustration that that would occur under his leadership as well, under any president,” he said. 

Later on Friday, governors hosted U.S. Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Amy Coney Barrett at their conference. More sessions will be held throughout the weekend.

Spectrum News' Erin Kelly contributed to this report