SAN ANTONIO – A day of unity during the nation’s largest Martin Luther King Jr. March on Monday was in sharp contrast to the stalemate over America’s longest-running government shutdown, which is now in day 31.
The shutdown was on the mind of U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat, as he joined thousands of others in the march.
“What we need is a shutdown of bigotry, racism and some leadership there to put all of our people together for the betterment of our country," he said.
U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican, said President Donald Trump made “an additional generous offer” of giving a three-year reprieve to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients and groups of other immigrants who’ve lost their protected status.
But Democratic leaders quickly rejected the offer of temporary relief because the president still wants $5.7 billion for a permanent border wall. They’ve said they want federal workers put back to work with pay before border security negotiations can begin.
Cornyn said he’ll return to Capitol Hill to vote this week on the president’s offer.
“It’s just a proposal, and now the Senate can amend it and send it to the House,” Cornyn said. “That’s the way we solve these problems.”
U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, a Republican, opposes the border wall.
“We’ve known that building a wall from sea to sea is the most expensive and least effective way to do border security,” Hurd said.
The president during his announcement Saturday said it would be “a strategic deployment of physical barriers or a wall.”
Hurd called on lawmakers to “put down preconditions, lay our swords down, and let’s solve this problem.”
Cornyn questioned the human cost of shutdown.
“It really doesn’t make any sense to me to just shut down the government, hurt a lot of innocent people and not do our job, which is to govern,” Cornyn said.