Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN-07), who says he’s “the only one left in the middle,” urged Democrats to “give Trump the money” for the border wall during a recent interview.
Peterson sat down with Joel Heitkamp Tuesday for his KFGO News & Views program to discuss the ongoing government shutdown and how to get out of it, though Peterson didn’t exactly have an optimistic outlook.
“I don’t see how we get out of this either, and they’re not reaching out to us—maybe me. I’m kind of the only one left in the middle. There’s a way out of this, but I mean both sides have taken these ridiculous positions. Our side—we’ve wasted money on things worse than the wall. I’m not against the wall. There’s places where it’s needed. We don’t need a wall coast to coast, but there’s places where a wall makes sense,” Peterson said.
The Democrat from rural Minnesota said he’s been “talking to some ranchers down there” who have people “crawling over their fences and there’s no border patrol agents.”
“One guy told me he had some people crawl over and he called the border patrol, and he said it’d be five hours before we can get there,” Peterson added.
Peterson believes that both sides have backed themselves into a corner, and he doesn’t “know how you get out of this.”
“I told them the other day, you know I’m a committee chairman, so I’m in the room with other leadership and I told them you guys are making a mistake. Give Trump the money,” said Peterson, who now chairs the House Agriculture Committee.
“Well, I’d give him the whole thing that he wants, and put some strings on it so you make sure that he puts the wall where it needs to be. I mean, why are we fighting over this? We’re going to build that wall anyway, sometime. They don’t want to give him a win, he doesn’t want to give Nancy a win. Whatever. The people suffering are the poor people that work for the government. These 800,000 people that are in limbo. I’ve talked to some of them. They’re beside themselves. They don’t know what to do,” Peterson continued.
As The Minnesota Sun reported, Peterson recently said in an interview on Fox News that the majority of constituents calling his office are in favor of building the wall.
“Today, we got 67 calls for building the wall and five against. So, sounds to me like he’s still pretty popular,” he claimed.
As of January 11, the U.S. economy lost $3.6 billion due to the government shutdown, according to an S&P Global Ratings report. That number is expected to exceed the cost of the border wall by the end of January.
“The longer this shutdown drags on, the more collateral damage the economy will suffer,” the S&P’s report said, estimating that the U.S. economy is losing $1.2 billion per week.
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Anthony Gockowski is managing editor of Battleground State News and The Minnesota Sun. Follow Anthony on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Collin Peterson” by Collin Peterson.
