next. plus, border wall battle. democrats take control of the house and make clear they re not budging on the president s top priority. we re not doing a wall. we are not doing a wall. do red state democrats feel any pressure to compromise to reopen the government? alabama senator doug jones is here, in minutes. and taking the house. as democrats prepare to use their new power, passions of new members are already boiling over. we re going to impeach the [ bleep ]. but with house leadership preaching caution, will the fight over impeachment divide democrats? we ll ask the man leading investigations into the president for the house, democratic congressman adam schiff, in moments. hello, i m jake tapper in washington, where the state of our union is in complete dysfunction. we are now in the 16th day of the partial government shutdown over the president s border wall with no suggestion of progress being made. today president trump travels to camp david to meet with senior st
well, the problem is that the government is shut down. you know, our state wants the government to open, to be open for business. i think that s the most important thing for the people of alabama right now. we have a lot of government workers in this state. we also have a lot of contractors who spend on that government work. you know, a lot of people want border security, for sure, but they also want the government services and they want the government to operate. i do not believe that holding government workers and all those affected by government services hostage is the way to determine how best to secure our borders, which everyone wants. well, i don t know if you heard acting white house chief of staff mick mulvaney, but he s saying the president wants $5.6 billion for border security, which includes the wall but not exclusively. speaker nancy pelosi says she s not willing to give any money for the wall. do you think that there should be a compromise made that some money should
that. neither barack obama nor jimmy carter have ever endorsed the idea of a border wall. who exactly was he talking about? my guess is this boils down to some of the semantic difficulties we had with leader schumer just yesterday. he kept saying you don t have money for a wall now, you don t have money for a wall now, and we re showing pictures of what we re building on the border with the money that we received last year. it s a very similar style to what the president wants to build in the future, a steel, what they call a bollard fence, a 30-foot-high, steel barrier. and our understanding is that s not a wall in the law. right now the wall limits our use of concrete, for example, on the border. and we re like, that s fine. that s completely fine. so i m not really sure you don t know what president it was? no, i don t know what the presidents mean when they say they weren t supporting a wall. george bush was president in 2006 during the security fence act, which is what we
for hurns of thousands of government employees on the line, the nbc biz tech team came up with a list what else $5 billion could actually buy. for the cost of a wall, you could build and install a solar farm that could power 1 million homes. a lot of houses. if clean energy doesn t excite you what about bonuses? with $5 billion, every nurse in america could receive a $1,500 bonus. imagine that. or you could give that same bonus to every schoolteacher in the united states and still have $200 million left over. currently the epa operates on just an $8 billion budget. government could use the $5 billion wall request to increase the epa budget by 60%. not going to do that, though it seem. $5 billion would more than double the budget for substance abuse and mental health administrations that government agencies are tasked with redu reducing the impact of substance abuse and mental illness on
empower and embolden him to do this again and again and again. at which point as a democratic leader do you put a line in the sand and say, no. not even a inch more fencing to call it what you want to call it to placate your base and establish a precedent for what you ll do next time. that s a decision for democrats. a tough one. daca has been a priority for the party for so long. the other hand, do you negotiate with people who negotiate the way donald trump has? the answer, i m not sure. if the conference and caucus will go along with the two leaders if they do that. the thing, also an issue who will actually pay for the wall. in essence, the president put out i want this $5 billion. eventually we ll pay it back because mexico will pay for the wall through the trade deal. the problem, people within the administration, tpresident and mick mulvaney can t agree who will pay for the wall. the president saying mexico will pay and sticking to it. mick mulvaney saying on the sunday shows