DelBene: Trump's take on immigration 'does not move us forward'

President Donald Trump talked a lot about immigration in his State of the Union address last night. He said the immigration package in Congress right now would give a path to citizenship for Dreamers, fully secure the border, end the visa lottery and “chain migration.”

Washington is home to 18,000 of those Dreamers. Congresswoman Suzan DelBene, Democrat, supports the bipartisan bill, but: “Legislation like this, we could put on the floor right away and I think would pass, but leadership has not allowed them to move,” she said.

Trump said in his address that he's committed to fight the opioid epidemic in our country. This is also an issue in our state, but the administration hasn't allocated any additional money to fight it. DelBene pointed out that money will be an obstacle for a while as federal government only has a budget that goes through Feb. 8.

“All of the programs he talked about, the opioid crisis or infrastructure, important programs that we need to support, but it takes money to do that and we have a government that is only operating a few weeks at a time right now,” DelBene said.

From her perspective, DelBene sees that the state of the union as very divided.

“I think we have a lack of leadership in the White House. A lot of concerns with ethics in the White House ... a lot of concerns about what’s happening with respect to the Russia investigation, and none of that was discussed last night either.”