Republican presidential candidate John Kasich said Sunday that although he is for defunding Planned Parenthood, he doesn’t think shutting down the government would be the solution.
“Some congressional Republicans say they are willing to shut down the government when the budget runs out at the end of the month if that’s what it takes to defund Planned Parenthood,” host Chris Wallace said to Kasich on “Fox News Sunday,” asking, “Do you support that?”
The Ohio governor made it clear that Planned Parenthood should be defunded in light of videos showing the abortion provider illegally selling fetuses, yet still disagreed with a shutdown because of President Obama’s opposition.
“Well, first of all, I think planned parenthood ought to be defunded, no question about it. We are doing everything we can in Ohio to figure out how to get that done. Secondly though, if you’re going to shut the government down, you’re never going to get anything signed by the President, ’cause he’s in total opposition.”
“So you shut the government down and then over time, you would have to open it back up again and you wouldn’t have achieved much,” he added. “So I think there are other ways for Congress to try to deal with this and they need to be more creative in regard to Planned Parenthood, but when you shut the government down, people don’t like it and you shouldn’t shut it down unless you have a great chance of success.”
Kasich also discussed the government shutdown he took part in as a congressman in order to achieve a balanced budget.
“I was involved in the shutdown in the ’90s, but as a result of that, we got a federally balanced budget ’cause we kind of knew that there were a number of people in the Clinton administration that believed it needed to be done, but you’ve got to be very careful when it comes to shutting down the federal government.”