Government Shutdown Spurs Partisan Divide
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PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - With neither President Donald Trump nor Democratic leaders budging for and against a border wall paid by U.S. taxpayers, the president is appealing for support directly from the Oval Office.
"We have an absolute crisis with criminals and gang members coming through," says the President.
"It is national security. It's a national emergency."
Nonsense, say Democrats.
It's a made-up crisis to justify a campaign promise Trump cannot fulfill, Democrats claim.
"The fact of the matter is that the number of apprehensions, the number of migrants crossing the border is way down over the last few years," says U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler, a Democrat who chairs the House Judiciary Committee.
"It is not an emergency of that nature."
"I expect the president to lie to the American people," says Nadler. "Why do i expect this? Because he has been lying to the American people."
Both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer will refute the President in a response following his speech.
In the meantime, Governor Wolf says the shutdown is hurting Pennsylvanians.
"It's affecting Pennsylvania right now," says Wolf.
An estimated 12,000 federal workers in the state are furloughed or working without pay.
Protests are growing with one Tuesday at Independence Park in Philadelphia..
"The Trump shutdown is unnecessary. It is a phony, manufactured crisis," said U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle, a Philadelphia Democrat.
Not so, says Pittsburgh's newest congressman, U.S. Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, a Peters Township Republican.
"The people back in my district in southwestern Pennsylvania, they want to do something about border security," Reschenthaler told KDKA political editor Jon Delano on Tuesday.
"They know that illegal drugs are coming across the porous southern border and are literally killing people in southwestern Pennsylvania."
Reschenthaler ties the opioid epidemic here to fentanyl crossing the border with Mexico.
"We've got to do something to secure this border."
The new Republican lawmaker says he'd be willing support a compromise on the dollar figure for the wall as long as "we're doing something to stop the illegal drugs, particularly the fentanyl, from coming into southwestern Pennsylvania."
