CHARLESTON, W.Va. — U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said she is optimistic Congress will approve a deal in February to prevent another government shutdown as well as fund border security efforts, including a provision including a southern border wall.
“We do hard things all the time up here. There’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to do this hard thing,” she said on Monday’s MetroNews “Talkline.”
President Donald Trump and Congress approved on Friday a three-week resolution to re-open the government after 35 days of the partial shutdown. The deal included fully funding the federal government through Feb. 15 with no money for a border wall, as well as the formation of a conference committee to come up with a deal on funding the Department of Homeland Security.
During the shutdown, Democratic congressional leaders refused to allow any money for a wall while Trump maintained a request for $5.7 billion.
Capito will serve on the conference committee, made up of members from the Senate and House of Representatives. Capito said shutdowns are “useless,” and something she wants to avoid.
“It just devolved into who’s winning, who’s got more leverage, what’s the political gamesmanship that we can play here,” she said. “I hope we can step away from that and move to other issues that are really important to the American people.”
Around 800,000 federal workers were furloughed or worked without pay during the shutdown.
Capito said a legislative solution will likely include funding for a barrier; Capito serves as chair of the Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee which approved $1.6 billion for a border wall last year, the first amount requested by the Trump administration.
“We fulfilled his request in a bipartisan way. I think the situation has worsened, and he came back and said: ‘Actually, I need more,'” Capito said. “That’s where we ran into a stumbling block.”
Capito visited the border in August to better understand enforcement efforts.
“I think that he recognizes as much as I do — because I was down there to see it — we’ve got a situation that is unsafe. It’s unsafe for people who are legally trying to come across. It’s unsafe for the folks who are coming through the points of entry. This is all tied into that,” she said.
The senator also said one item worth considering should be long-term legal status for individuals who entered the United States illegally as children.
“I can speak for most of my fellow Republicans. They have a lot of empathy for the young people when they came in, and giving them a permanent status is the fairest way to approach this,” she said. “We’ll see how hard it is in the end. I don’t think it’ll be easy, but I don’t think it’s impossible.”
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. — also appearing on MetroNews “Talkline” — said a workable bill would have to include funding, but “professional engineers” are needed to review the best approaches for border security.
Manchin also said lawmakers should pass a resolution that would prevent Congress from being paid in the event of a shutdown.
“I told the president: ‘Why would you hold 800,000 jobs hostage and millions of peoples services who are needed basically because there’s a disagreement on Homeland Security?'” he said.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Monday the president does not want to deal with a potential second shutdown.