the waste category or business category. house republicans moving to possibly impeach alejandro mayorkas over the border. negotiators in the senate say they re making progress toward landing on a deal that includes doing more border security. do you think in the end the deal is going to be good enough for democrats? setting aside mayorkas for a second. i m not exactly sure where they are. but let s remember that the president offered a deal to dramatically increase border security last october. my friends across the aisle refused to put it on the floor. i think there s room for these discussions and good compromise. if there s no good faith, it won t get done. do you think alejandro mayorkas has done a good job when it comes to managing the crisis at the border, congressman? extraordinarily difficult time. i think he s done the best he can. he needs a lot more resources. let s remember the system was dismantled under the previous administration. we need those hearing officers, we
what rachel is talking about? does it exist and is it as hot? i don t think it s as hot for democrats as republicans, but there is. from a negotiating point of view, smart for the republicans to put something out there to try to put pressure on democrats. you have to look at what they put out there and the context they put out there. they have, on one hand, said, we ll extend dreamers for three years. then, there s a poison pill in there about applying for asylum so much more difficult. they knew the democrats were going to reject this when they put it out there. democrats, again, context is important. when democrats were looking at border security last year and doing some sort of compromise, they didn t control the house or the senate. we hadn t had the election. we had the election. trump made it about the wall. the voters went with the democrats position. to now turn around and say, i will give you what you wanted
respond. let s talk basic numbers. $285 billion is what we spent to enforce border security last year. $285 billion is a lot of money. $5.6 billion is a drop in that bucket, to add more of that border barrier we are talking about. whether it is slats and steel or a hard wall in some places. it s a tiny amount of money. the president said last may to the nation, i want to another continuing resolution. i m going to do border security, and we are going to set a budget. the democrats haven t gone along with it, but he s keeping his promise. it s a president keeping his campaign promise about a wall. the democrats want border security. more copperheads. at the end of the day, we cannot shut down our government for a campaign promise. harris: antjuan, you should ve told that the chuck schumer in february of last year when he was willing to shutdown the government and he did. and he stood in the way. it was a shorter period of time, then the two weeks we have seen. this could potenti
beginning, with maybe daca thrown in, maybe another billion thrown into it, but it s not going to be the $5 billion. and the question that the democrats have, here s an issue that you have to deal with, the executive branch didn t spend what they allocated for border security last year. so why allocate more if you haven t spent what you ve got? there are people who say that there s got to be stuff done, but it s not going to be a $5 billion wall and it never will be. so margaret, let s talk about the democratic strategy here. we now know, democratic sources confirming to our reporters on capitol hill that as soon as they take over the house of representatives, they re going to pass through a package of six bipartisan full senate appropriations bills and a stopgap measure to reopen the government. they re basically going to put the ball back in mitch mcconnell s hands to deal with the president. is this the wise way to go about it? could this force the president s hand? and could it p
way in the senate that this could be averted? well, frankly, the president could indicate once again that he s willing to sign the bill that we have already passed through the senate. the senate passed a bill we worked on very hard in a bipartisan way all year that includes 1.6 billion in additional investments in border security but doesn t include $5 billion for a border wall. that strikes me as a small difference that is not worth shutting down the government over. and by the way, let me remind you, making 40,000 federal law enforcement officers, 54,000 customs and border patrol agents and suofficers work over the holiday without pay is not the result. the president hasn t yet spend the $1.3 billion we appropriated for border security last year. this is a fight more over message and the president trying