President Barack Obama should not create a confrontational atmosphere over immigration following the midterm elections, but instead use it as "reset" for Republicans and Democrats to find compromises to the problems facing the country, said Republican Sen. Tom Coburn.
Coburn, who is retiring from his Oklahoma Senate seat, told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Obama should "walk into this a lot more slowly" as he faces a Congress that will be majority Republican.
"I'm just worried that we're not taking advantage of a time period where we could get a reset, and actually, maybe, accomplish a whole lot more for the country that would be true compromises, between what some of the things the president would like to see and the Congress would like to see," Coburn said Thursday.
Obama should be saying to Republicans, "OK, let's find the areas we can work on that are in the best interest of the country," rather than starting out with a "unilateral executive order that will set a tone," Coburn said.
"Why not start off and let's try to say, 'Let's start working together,' " he said. "Let's not poke fingers in eyes. Let's do what's best for the country. Let's see if we can achieve things."
On the immigration issue, Coburn said securing the border needed to come first, adding without that, "Whatever you do today, you're going to be doing something else later."
While "everybody wants to solve the problem" on immigration, he said the solution was to apply "common sense steps." He also suggested federal government agencies were not equipped to hand the millions of people who were expected to be affected by an executive order.
"The Department of Homeland Security doesn't have the capability to handle this order. There's not going to be any accurate characterization or control of who gets and who doesn't get cleared. There's not going to be any control of who gets benefits and who doesn't, regardless of what his executive order says," he said.
Coburn said it was important "the reactions to the solution aren't worse than the problem was to begin with" because of an executive order.
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