Sen. John Barrasso, backing President-elect Donald Trump's call for an immediate crackdown on illegal immigration, said Sunday he agrees with him that there is "no price tag" for his massive immigration and deportation plans and "protecting the safety and security" of Americans.
"President Trump is going to enforce the law, and we haven't had that over the last four years," the Wyoming Republican said on NBC News' "Meet the Press," stressing that Trump wants to go after criminals, people on the terrorist list, and "people in the country that have been murdering, raping, poisoning our citizens."
Trump is expected to use agencies across the government to deport record numbers of immigrants and pressure "sanctuary" jurisdictions to cooperate, according to sources close to him.
The Senate's mandate with Trump includes the economy and the open border, he added.
"Those are the things we're going to start working on immediately," said Barrasso. "There are things that the president can do as soon as he takes office in terms of making U-turns on these bad policies of the current administration in terms of unleashing American energy, in terms of the policies with the border, reversing so many of these executive orders that were put in place four years ago."
Barrasso said he expects Trump will reinstate his "remain in Mexico" policy, and stop the Biden administration's "catch and release" rules.
"The Senate also wants to work very quickly, actually, before the inauguration on making sure the president's Cabinet is in place," said Barrasso. "We will have hearings and vets so that on day one, Jan. 20, when the president takes over he'll have as much of the Cabinet in place as we can get."
Trump met a "huge resistance" when he took office in 2017 with getting his Cabinet approved, he added, but "what I am hoping is as a result of this huge landslide victory that we get a little more cooperation from the Democrats."
However, Barrasso would not comment on the talk about a potential appointment for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., considering his stance on health policy such as vaccinations.
"Since President Trump hasn't made nominations along those lines, I'm not going to comment on any one individual," said Barrasso. "What I will tell you is I expect the president to make bold decisions. He has to come up with 1200 different appointees who get confirmed by the United States Senate."
Senate Republicans have also been working toward continuing Trump's 2017 tax cuts to make them permanent while clawing back "excessive spending" from Democrats, said Barrasso.
"We've been working with Lindsey Graham,' he said. "He'll be chairman of the budget committee in the Senate to make sure we can accomplish as much as we possibly can to give the tax relief that the American people deserve, and we know that with all of this massive spending by the last administration that gave us this inflation that hurt the country so much."
However, he rejected estimates that the tax cuts could add $9 trillion to the national debt.
"When we cut taxes last time the amount of money coming into the Treasury went up," Barrasso said. "It stimulated the economy."
But with government spending, the problem is not that the nation is taxed too little, but that "we spend too much," said Barrasso.
"The government is too big," he said. "We spend too much, and I think that's a message coming out of this election."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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