'There Is a National Emergency Along the Border': Kevin McCarthy Talks Compromise Plan, Abortion, and Israel

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) says he’s supportive of President Trump declaring a national emergency to fund the border wall, even though it’s likely to face a lengthy legal challenge from Democrats in court.

“There is a national emergency along the border and the president has the right to do that,” McCarthy told CBN News. “If you listen to the experts, and that's what this does, if you listen to the experts they need a little over 200 miles of wall – it's not sea to shining sea – it's in the areas where we have our biggest problems.”

McCarthy feels confident they’ll get the wall built.

“This president works very hard at keeping his promises and this is one of his biggest,” he continued.

And even though the bipartisan, compromise-spending bill gives just about $1.375 billion towards the border wall, McCarthy sees this as a down payment on the wall.

“I think we'll get it done because when you look at this – Nancy Pelosi saying only 1 dollar for the wall, now we're getting about 1.4 billion, and we'll get the rest,” explained McCarthy. “They're going to eliminate ICE – no, we got more money from them. They're going to eliminate beds? Not able to do that. I think this is not 100% victory but it's a 1-2 step, then we can finish the job completely.”

McCarthy’s Priorities: Babies Who Survive Abortion

Another top issue for the House Minority Leader right now is passing the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.

“If a child is born-alive, you gotta do everything medically possible to save it, so if they're trying to have an abortion and the baby survives, you've got to save that life,” said McCarthy.

“It's really not about abortion – it's a child born alive. A survivor. Why wouldn't you use what you have medically to save that child or make that child's life continue?” he continued.

McCarthy and other Republicans are trying to bring the bill to the House floor each day but keep getting blocked by Democrats.

“We're going to ask every single day and then we'll start a discharge petition to make sure to bring this bill forward,” he explained.

He’ll need 218 signatures in order to bring the bill forth through the discharge petition, a tough endeavor in the Democrat-controlled House. But McCarthy implores people who support this bill to call their representatives and encourage them to sign the discharge petition once they call for it.

“This should not be a partisan issue, everybody should be able to support this,” McCarthy told CBN News.

He believes this will be a big issue in 2020.

“When I sit back and look at what this new Democrat majority is doing, one holding us back from born-alive protection, to this New Green Deal, which would eliminate cars, eliminate, you'd have to remodel every house, every building, you'd have to eliminate millions of jobs, and then you look at - you want to raise taxes, I mean it's not what I think the American public was looking for,” said McCarthy.

A Major Shift in the Democrat Party?

And in a response to a question about his thoughts of recent comments from Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar that seem to go against the Democrat Party's historically pro-Israel stance, he responded that he thinks we’re seeing significant changes in the Democratic Party.

“I think it's a changing Democratic Party – when you talk to many of the new Democrat members they don't even call themselves the Democrats, they're now the new Democrat socialist party and this is the younger more aggressive - and this is what's taking over the Democrat Party,” responded McCarthy.

Despite bipartisan outcry against Congresswoman Omar’s comments this week suggesting US lawmakers support Israel because of money from lobbyists, Democrat leadership says they will not answer calls to remove her from her committee assignments that include House Foreign Affairs.