Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Sen. Angus King (I-ME) said he can’t vote for a bill that includes ICE funding because they were attempting “to intimidate the American people.”
Host Margaret Brennan said, “This is having reverberations in Washington, as you well know. Leader Schumer said Democrats will not vote for the appropriations bill if DHS funding is included. That means we could see a partial shutdown here. Do you know how you’re going to vote?”
King said, “Margaret, I hate shutdowns. I’m one of the people that helped negotiate the solution to the last the end of the last shutdown. But I can’t vote for a bill that includes funding out of these circumstances. What they’re doing in my state, what we saw yesterday in and in Minneapolis, I think there’s an easy way out, by the way, Leader Thune could separate, which is what they did in the house, separate the five other appropriation bills, put them on the floor. They would pass, I think, overwhelmingly. Then let’s take up DHS and by the way, if those bills pass, 96% of the federal government is funded, take up DHS by itself. Let’s have an honest negotiation, put some guardrails on what’s going on, some accountability. And that would solve this problem. We don’t have to have a shutdown.”
He added, “There’s no need for this, overwhelming show of force. I believe what we’re seeing is an attempt to intimidate the American people again, arm people with masks and, and, telling people they can’t photograph what they’re doing and intimidate, protesters. That’s that’s not America.”
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