McConnell says there's 'not going to be a government shutdown'

Mitch McConnell on ABC News
(Image credit: ABC/Screenshot)

"There's not going to be a government shutdown," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told host George Stephanopoulos in an appearance on ABC's This Week Sunday. McConnell was responding to a question about whether Democrats would refuse "to agree to a deal to keep the government open unless the children of undocumented immigrants are protected" following President Trump's decision on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

"That's a ridiculous idea," McConnell said. "There is no crisis. The president has given us until March to address the issue of undocumented children who came into the country ... through no choice of their own," he continued, concluding that Democrats would not leave major programs unfunded and "shut down the government over an issue that is not an emergency."

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.