Sen. Alexander: Can't Use Shutdown as 'Bargaining Chip'

Legislators should never use a government shutdown as a “bargaining chip” to obtain money for budget negotiations, according to Tennessee GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander.

″We should never ever close the government down as a bargaining chip in a budget negotiation, whether it’s border security or Planned Parenthood or military funding or anything else,” Alexander, who was one of only a few Republican senators to support the Democratic proposal to end the recent shutdown, said on Fox News Sunday.

“I voted twice today to open the government because it should never have been shut down," Alexander said in a statement last Friday, according to the Nashville Post. "It is always wrong for either side to use shutting down the government as a bargaining chip in budget negotiations — it should be as off-limits as chemical weapons are to warfare."

“We need to get it out of the speaker’s hands and the public debate and into the hands of members of Congress who have for 20 years known that a comprehensive border security plan includes more personnel, more technology and more physical barrier,” he said on Sunday.

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