A government shutdown is not the answer to President Barack Obama and his pledge to use executive order to change the immigration system, Colorado Republican Sen.-elect Cory Gardner told MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
"There's no time, place, or purpose of a government shutdown or default. That's simply ridiculous, and something that a mature governing body doesn't even contemplate," Gardner said Friday.
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Republicans have been mulling their response to Obama and his threat to use executive action to make sweeping changes to the nation's immigration system.
One option that's been considered would attach an
immigration clause to a spending bill and could prompt a government shutdown, something incoming
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnellsaid would not happen.
Gardner said Republicans did need to find solutions to immigration issues, beginning with border security and a guest worker program. He said the message voters sent in the midterm elections was that saying "no to everything" was "unacceptable" to address immigration problems.
Gardner said voters also wanted Obama to "do the right thing" and work with Congress, as well as for Republicans in the House and Senate to "come together and realize we have to do something" on the immigration issue.
"The bottom line is, the House, the Senate, the White House should work together," he said. "Let's get together. Let's work. Let's use this new era of goodwill, if that's what you want to call it, as an opportunity to do something."
If Obama did act by executive order, Gardner said it wouldn't be "the kind of fixes that we need to the overall system to make sure that it's built to last for the next 30 to 40 years" to replace the "pieces and parts that we have today that simply aren't working."