Republican Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina said he was “disappointed” in Congress’ proposed border deal and said it would take 20 years to complete President Donald Trump’s wall.
“I am disappointed in it. Congress should do better,” Meadows said on “Fox & Friends” Wednesday. (RELATED: Immigration Hawks Blast Tentative Deal On Border Wall)
“That doesn’t mean that the president won’t sign it to keep the government open and use it as a tool to do that. … The amount of money that is here, it would take 20 years to complete the wall,” he continued. “So are we going to wait for 20 years to stop drug traffickers? Are we going to wait for 20 years to stop human trafficking? Are we going to wait 20 years to allow cartels to control our southern border? I hope not. We can do better than that. We should do better than that.”
The proposal was said to have been agreed to “in principle” by both Democrats and Republicans on Monday evening. The deal will include $1.375 billion for a border barrier but is well short of the $5.7 billion Trump requested.
Meadows is not optimistic about Congress’ ability to work with the president and said the White House may have to take executive action to get the border crisis under control.
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“I’m not optimistic. I don’t think the president is optimistic that Congress will help him do this,” he said. “You’ve got a lot of Democrats who want an open border situation on our southern border. And when we look at this, Brian [Kilmeade], what we have to do is have to encourage the president to take some type of executive action if Congress is not going to work.”
Meadows laid the blame for the current deal on Congress and said he hasn’t even read the 1,000 page bill. He also encouraged Trump to think about signing a continuing resolution to keep the government open.
“I’m not going to be disappointed in the president. I’m disappointed in Congress. I mean the president wants to keep the government open. If he uses this is as a vehicle, so be it. But let me stress this, Brian. No one’s seen the deal,” he said, adding:
“They were still negotiating it last night. Democrats were trying add things to this deal last night and nobody’s seen the text. Not even the conferees have seen it. And so at this point if we’re going to vote on 1,000 page plus bill today, I want to read it before I vote on it. So I would encourage the president to look at a continuing resolution and would help him to do that.”
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