Wednesday on CNN’s “New Day,” Rep. Steve King (R-IA) was asked by show co-host Alisyn Camerota if he was “comfortable” holding up funding for the federal government if it did not include money for the border wall.
King said that he was, but suggested taking it a step further by adding money earmarked for food stamps and Planned Parenthood to fund the wall.
Partial transcript as follows:
CAMEROTA: And it’s $1.6 billion. I mean, that’s what might be holding up, you know, the funding for the government. But are you comfortable, Congressman, with providing $1.6 billion of taxpayer money, not from Mexico, to build that wall?
KING: Absolutely yes, and more, and I’d throw another $5 billion on the pile and I would find a half of a billion dollars of that right out of Planned Parenthood’s budget. And the rest of it could come out of food stamps and the entitlements that are being spread out for people that haven’t worked in three generations.
We’ve got to put America back to work. This administration will do it. And we’ve got to let — we’ve got to free them up so that they can and support the right agenda for this country.
CAMEROTA: You want to take food from people who are the people who are on the lowest rung in terms of the nation’s safety net, and their children — in terms of food stamps, you’re happy to take — you’re willing to take money from them to build the $1.6 — or to give the $1.6 billion for the border wall?
KING: For a couple of reasons. One of them would be that, you know, we will create the kind of security that would bring about 10 million new jobs in America just by enforcing immigration law.
The second thing is I wouldn’t impose anything any more strict on anybody in America than what Michelle Obama did with her school lunch program. And so, I would just say let’s limit for that. Anybody that wants to have food stamps it’s up to the school lunch program. That’s fine.
And — but we have seen this go from 19 million people on, now, the SNAP program, up to 47 million people on the SNAP program.
CAMEROTA: And you don’t think all of them need it?
KING: Oh, I’m sure that all of them didn’t need it. And so, we need to sit this down and ratchet it back down again. We built the program because to solve the problem of malnutrition in America, and now we have a problem of obesity.
And when you match up the EBT card with the — what the scales say on some of the folks, I think it’s worth looking at. Michelle Obama looked at it. Republicans should be able to look at it, too.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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