Last updated on January 1st, 2019 at 08:10 am
House Democratic Caucus chair, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said that Democrats refuse to waste billions of dollars on Donald Trump‘s wall.
Transcript via ABC’s This Week:
RADDATZ: And — and congressman, let’s move back to the shutdown, the partial government shutdown. Nancy Pelosi’s office says House Democrats are considering three options to reopen the government but none of those options include money for a border wall. The president’s team reportedly offered a $2.5 billion compromise. Why isn’t that a good compromise?
JEFFRIES: Well, at its core, our responsibility in government is to manage public money. We can either manage it efficiently or we can waste taxpayer dollars. And what Donald Trump and the Republicans want to do is waste $5 billion in taxpayer money on an ineffective medieval border wall that is a 5th century solution to a 21st century problem.
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Yes, we need comprehensive immigration reform. Yes, we need to enhance border security. But we are not willing to pay $2.5 billion or $5 billion and wasting taxpayer dollars on a ransom note because Donald Trump decided that he was going to shutdown the government and hold the American people hostage. That’s unreasonable.
Video:
Trump is being politically pummeled by the government shutdown. The White House can tell itself that it is winning, but as the American people begin to feel the pain from Trump‘s tactics, his losses are only going to worsen. Trump can’t blame the Democrats for the shutdown, because he already took responsibility for it.
Democrats also have no demands. It is Donald Trump who is holding the country hostage over his wall money. More specifically, Trump is holding the nation hostage because he made a promise that he can’t keep. Trump promised Mexico would pay for the wall. They won’t, so now that he is backed into a corner, Trump is trying to extort the money from the taxpayers.
It’s not going to happen.
As Rep. Jeffries made clear, Democrats are not going waste a single taxpayer dollar on Trump‘s wall.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
