LETTER: GOP plays politics on border bill

Is there a problem on our Southern border? Of course there is. It is one that our elected officials should be addressing rather than playing politics.

Yet the speaker of the House says the House will not take up a vital foreign aid bill unless it is accompanied by border legislation. The Senate considered and rejected a bill developed by a bipartisan committee that addressed that very issue. If the reason for rejection was that it “didn’t go far enough,” why didn’t they use the tried-and-true American democratic process of working the bill and amending it to address their concerns? Isn’t that what we send them to Washington to do?

Evidently, the elephant in the room is that they are playing politics with people’s lives for the apparent reason that the presumptive Republican presidential candidate wants to keep the problem unsolved simply to use it as a campaign issue. If the problem can be successfully addressed by our congressional representatives, it is morally reprehensible to refuse to deal with it in a responsible, adult manner.

Let’s get to work and solve the problem. It is just getting worse every day. Doing nothing may or may not help one political party. But doing nothing certainly does not help our country.