Scalise: Democrats Must Come to the Table to Fund Border Security

Click here or on the image above to watch the Mornings with Maria interview.

Click here or on the image above to watch the America’s Newsroom interview.

Highlights:On the importance of keeping our southern border secure:

“What we have is a difference of understanding about what is happening at the border. The President has been very clear, from when he ran for office, that he wants to protect America’s border and keep this country safe. Now more than ever, when you see the caravan, you have thousands of people literally saying we’re just going to storm your border and come into the country. And oh, by the way, we have at least 600 known convicted criminals as part of this caravan. These aren’t people seeking asylum by the way, Sandra. They were offered asylum and jobs in Mexico and turned it down, so let’s not talk about asylum. It’s about whether or not we are going to have rule of law in the country. We let a million people a year into our country legally. There is a legal process. There are thousands of people waiting to come to this country the right way. Follow the rules and the President said, ‘If you want to seek asylum there is a way to do it.’ That’s not what this is about.

“The border funding is going to be the big battle in these next 11 days. The President is negotiating with the Senate and House now, Republican and Democrat. The President has laid out very clearly, he wants $5 billion. It is not just to build the wall. Clearly, that’s a big part of it, but it’s for all the other technology and supporting things that our border patrol agents need. They’re attacking our border patrol agents, some of these people in this caravan, literally attacking border patrol agents. We need to give them the tools to be safe as they protect our border.”

On current negotiations with House Democrats to fund the government:

“First of all, to say that it’s immoral to protect this country. Obviously, where Nancy Pelosi is right now is with the open borders crowd. The people that don’t want any borders, that don’t want ICE agents. She has been for abolishing ICE. I think what’s happening right now, the Democrats in the House are being held hostage by the extreme radicals on the left. This isn’t mainstream. Most of this country, wherever they are on DACA, believes we ought to secure the border. Let’s deal with immigration. The President was willing to put a lot of things on the table to negotiate with Democrats in exchange for wall funding and they walked away. They said they don’t want to do anything because the extreme left doesn’t want to do anything. They want open borders. That’s the dilemma Nancy Pelosi is in right now.”

On Democrats threat to shut down the government:

“There are a lot of things the President has been willing to negotiate on in exchange for getting the wall funding and dealing with the DACA problem. We’ve had bills on the House floor to address the DACA problem and every single Democrat voted no on all of those measures. When Nancy Pelosi had a super majority and when Barack Obama was President, she never tried to deal with this problem. They don’t want to agree to any solution because they want open borders on the far left. The problem they’re going to have is this country doesn’t want a shutdown over whether or not to secure the border. They want a secure border. The President wants to secure the border. He got elected President on that platform. Are they going to say they want to shut the government down because they don’t want to secure America’s border?

“Well, I support the President’s position that we need to fund true border security, including the wall. The number is $5 billion. If there is a better way to get there than what the President has laid out, then they need to come with an alternative. They can’t come and say they want to shut the government down for no reason because they don’t want border security. They will lose that argument with the American people.”