Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) vented her frustration to Migrant Insider's Pablo Manríquez on Friday, as the carefully crafted deal between Senate Democrats and Republicans, and the White House, to avert a shutdown has been single-handedly held up by one disgruntled Republican senator.
Democrats, outraged at the recent brutal crackdown by federal immigration agents around the country and the fatal shootings in Minneapolis, persuaded Senate Republicans to carve Department of Homeland Security funding out of the so-called "minibus" package to keep the government open past Friday, and pass a two-week stopgap that would allow for negotiations on new oversight and rules for immigration raids.
But Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is holding this package up, partly because he wants a vote to abolish state and local policies against aiding Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, and partly because he opposes a provision repealing a controversial policy to let senators sue over the seizure of their phone records in the 2020 election interference investigations.
"On the DHS funding, Lindsey Graham is now threatening to hold up the final package for a sanctuary cities vote," said Manríquez. "Any reaction to that?"
"Yeah," said Murkowski. "You know, I don't know if you saw [North Carolina] Senator [Thom] Tillis' comments, and I usually prefer to just give you my views on it, but I thought he summed it up really very well: 'This will be a Republican shutdown if we do this.' I just — I do not believe that there is any good reason that we should, as Republicans, be the ones to move us into a government shutdown."
"I understand where Senator Graham is coming from on the issue of sanctuary cities, but the reality is, is that the proposal that sits in front of us that allows five of the six bills to move forward, be signed in to law, and then giving us a little bit of breathing space to do other measures in this DHS area of jurisdiction," Murkowski continued. "So take that up then if you will, but don't cause a government shutdown, really, over more than half the government particularly, it would be Defense, it's Transportation, you know, all of it."
"You know, I don't like the fact that we're going to have our Coast Guard and our TSA and FEMA kind of held in abeyance for a couple weeks, but I think where we are now with a solution in front of us is ours to take, and I think we would be foolish if we did anything less," she added.
