Garden City Telegram
Amber Friend

U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) updated Garden City residents on negotiations regarding the government shutdown, and the latest news on Amtrak and veteran affairs Friday morning as part of a quick trip across western Kansas counties, including stops in Colby, Lakin and Ulysses.

“I don’t think a shutdown makes sense. I don’t think this one made sense,” Moran said. “My experience when this has happened before is it doesn’t ever have the desirable outcome, and ... lots of people who, through no fault of their own, are damaged in the process.”

Moran said the government was still, as it had been before the shutdown, locked in a standoff between President Donald Trump and Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, one that Moran said could be solved with “an appropriate give and take,” but could possibly drag on.

He said he believed the bipartisan committee charged with finding a new plan for border security funding will be able to reach an agreement, and he thought the government “should work very hard to make certain that we don’t end up in a shutdown again.”

“The question will become ‘Is it something that’s acceptable to get a presidential signature?’ and I don’t have an answer to that question at this point,” Moran said.

Moran said he and Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) discussed possibly adding immigration legislation to a border security plan in an attempt to compromise, specifically a “fix” to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) that would go beyond what Trump proposed during the shutdown.

Many aspects of immigration reform lack the votes to proceed, Moran said, but there may be enough votes for extending DACA.

“I started to say ‘I’m hopeful.’ I would say it differently. I’m hoping that there is a fix that avoids the mess that we’ve had for the last 35 days,” Moran said.

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