Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) said President Donald Trump’s proposal on immigration was a “straw man proposal” that is not meant to become law.
Saturday, Trump proposed a deal that includes $5 billion to partially fund a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and a three-year extension of protections for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program recipients and temporary protected status holders.
Lankford said, “The problem we have had for the past 30 days is everybody has been staring at everyone playing politics instead of policy. Politics is easier than policy on this. We have to get a proposal on the table. What I encourage the White House to do, and multiple others encouraged the White House to do is put in a proposal. They’ve listened to a lot of Democrat and Republican members for the last month. They’ve heard all the demands. They know all the background on it. Put out a straw man proposal. Get something out there the president can say, ‘I can support this,’ and it has elements from both sides, put it on the table, then open it up for debate. The vote this week in the Senate is not to pass the bill.”
He continued. “It is to open up and say, ‘Can we debate this? Can we amend it? Can we make changes?’ Let’s find a way to be able to get the government open because there are elements in this that are clearly elements that have been supported by Democrats strongly in the past.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN