On the heels of his vote against a bill that would ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, Sen. Doug Jones (D-Mountain Brook) made his first national broadcast network television appearance as a U.S. Senator on “CBS This Morning” on Tuesday.
Jones offered his thoughts on President Donald Trump’s upcoming State of the Union address, which he said he was hoping will be a “presidential address” steeped in bipartisanship.
“I’m hoping and expecting that the president will deliver a presidential address, not a campaign address, but a presidential address in which he lays out not only his accomplishments this past year but also his goals for the future,” Jones said. “I’m hoping he’s going to reach across the aisle. I think he’s going to be talking about unity. I think that’s the best way to advance the agenda. I think my election was somewhat of a wake-up call for America that we need to really get together to try to reach across the aisle, have a bipartisan agreement on these things, and get the country moving.”
Jones urged Trump “not to draw a line in the dust and say it’s my way or the highway,” and pointed to immigration as the area where Trump should work with both parties in Congress.
“Obviously everyone wants to increase security on the borders. What it exactly looks like and how much it’s going to cost is going to be the details that we really haven’t seen from the government. At this point, you know, it’s — $25 billion is a lot of money. During the campaign, the president talked about building a wall, but he said Mexico was going to pay for it. Now we know it’s going to be the American public that’s going to pay for it. So, we have to be careful. We have to be smart with our money. But look, I think the president has laid out goals and objectives that need to be put on the table and discussed. I think the Democrats are going to have that. I think other Republicans are going to have some. I am very optimistic about an immigration plan going forward.”
He added there could be a “broad consensus” on the two key areas of the immigration issue, which he indicated was the status of the DREAMers and border security.
“I don’t think it’s a question of doing a deal with this president,” Jones said. “I don’t think you’ll see that at all. I think they want to get an immigration deal done. Obviously, DACA and the DREAMers are important, but border security is also important to Democrats. The details are going to be something that have to be worked out. We have to look at what some people call ‘chain migration.’ Other people call ‘family reunification.’ All of that is going to be issues. What I’m hoping we can do is focus on the two most important pillars of immigration right now which is the DACA issue, as well as border security. I think there can be broad consensus on those two pillars.”
CBS’s Gayle King asked Jones to explain why he bucked his party and voted with the GOP in the last funding continuing resolution. Jones said it was part of his commitment to the Child Health Insurance Program and what would have happened to the state of Alabama in the event of a government shutdown that influenced his vote.
“I don’t think I voted against my own party in particular,” he replied. “There other Democrats who voted like I did. I had to do a different equation. You know, I campaigned a lot on the Child Health Insurance Program, CHIP. That was an important part of my campaign. It is important to my state where 150,000 kids were getting pink slips for their health care. That was very important that we were funding CHIP for six years. Alabama also would have been hurt a lot by a shutdown in the government. We have a lot of federal dollars that come in. So I looked at the whole picture. I was not happy, to be honest with you. I don’t think continuing resolutions are a way to fund the government. We need to get back to some regular order where we do a budget and have that. But having said that, I had to make a decision, and I felt like keeping the government open and funding CHIP was the right way to go.”
Jeff Poor is a graduate of Auburn University and works as the editor of Breitbart TV. Follow Jeff on Twitter @jeff_poor.
