Mark Meadows: ‘There Is Nothing’ the CR Bill that Dems Oppose

‘They’re using it as leverage to help them negotiate a deal that perhaps helps illegal immigrants to our country’

STEPHANOPOULOS: You sure you're not being overly modest about your influence, Congressman? Has the president promised you that he wouldn't agree to an immigration deal that you don't sign on to?

MEADOWS: No. He hasn't promised that. I know that was reported. I can tell you that what he has consistently said is that he wants to deal with this particular issue. He wants to get a deal that, yes, Tom Cotton and I can fully support. But it's not just the two of us, it's a broad spectrum across our conference, a bipartisan deal, indeed, he wants to do that.

In fact, when I was in the Oval Office with him a week or so ago, he said he wanted to make sure that the Tom Cottons and the Mark Meadows of the world can work with the Lindsey Grahams and the Dick Durbins of the world. Now that's before Dick Durbin went out and soured the negotiation a week or so ago. But I can tell you that he is committed to getting this done.

We need to go back to the negotiations. We can do that if the Democrats -- the Senate Democrats here in the next 24 hours will vote to open the government back up. The negotiations will start again. And so your viewers, you know, if they're DACA recipients and they're concerned about being deported, there's a deal that can be made, but we have to open the government first.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But opening the government, the deal that moderate senators on both sides are talking about right now is extend the government until February 8 in return for a hard commitment in both the House and the Senate to vote on their bipartisan deal. Are you willing to go along with that?

MEADOWS: Well, I'm not willing to go along with it. It's not in this particular deal. And when you start to look at that, to suggest -- listen, I wanted a whole lot of things in this continuing resolution. The president called me from Air Force One and said, you know, I'm asking you to stand down on two of your requests that you are wanting to put in here.

I guess the question I have for Senator Schumer is, is, you know, the whole Cadillac tax that actually is penalizing union workers, does he want that out of there? You know, the CHIP reauthorization that helps 9 million children, does he want that out of there? There is nothing in this bill that they oppose. They're using it as leverage to help them negotiate a deal that perhaps helps illegal immigrants to our country.

And we've got to find a deal. I'm willing to engage even with my good friend Luis. We'll sit down as soon as the government opens and try to find a solution. But today, this is about funding our government, our military men and women, our veterans, our border security agents. And I find it is a tactic that we should not be using to truly provide that leverage.

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