Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said Wednesday that he would hate to see President Trump declare a state of emergency at the U.S. border amid the ongoing government shutdown.
“I do think there’s an emergency, but I would hate to see the president have to declare a national emergency because it would show that Congress is not working,” Bacon told Hill.TV’s Buck Sexton and Krystal Ball on “Rising.”
“What I have seen over the last 20 years is that Congress’s inability to get past these hard issues and creating gridlock, that the presidents of both parties, as well as judges on the bench, legislate from the bench,” he continued. “They fill that void.”
Bacon’s comments come after Trump did not declare a state of emergency in a presidential address Tuesday, but reiterated his demand for a border wall in the wake of what he called a crisis.
Trump is demanding $5 billion dollars in funding for his proposed wall, but Democrats are not budging, and have instead have offered $1.3 billion in border security measures.
“This is Congress’s job to fix. We need to compromise. We need to negotiate in good faith,” he said. “Right now, I think Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are not negotiating in good faith. They’re saying wait until the government opens. Well, they said that in December when the government was open, and they refused to negotiate.”
“We’ve got to come together and we’ve got to find a middle ground, and do our job in Congress, and not leave this for presidential executive order for declaring a national emergency,” he said.
— Julia Manchester
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