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Sen. Lamar Alexander’s response to Trump: ‘I wasn’t elected to shut down the government’

In this Jan. 12, 2016 file photo, Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn. speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington. A bipartisan Senate effort to continue federal payments to insurers and avert a costly rattling of insurance markets faces a dicey future, underscoring that last week's wreck of the Republican drive to repeal the Obama health care law hasn't eased the issue's fraught politics. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File) In this Jan. 12, 2016 file photo, Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn. speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington. A bipartisan Senate effort to continue federal payments to insurers and avert a costly rattling of insurance markets faces a dicey future, underscoring that last week's wreck of the Republican drive to repeal the Obama health care law hasn't eased the issue's fraught politics. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

By The Tennessean August 25, 2017 1 min read

U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander said Thursday that he wasn’t elected to shut down the government but to make the government work for taxpayers.

The Tennessee Republican made the comments after President Donald Trump threatened to shut down the federal government if lawmakers do not get behind his request to fund a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.

“The last time the government was shut down, it hurt small businesses all over East Tennessee at peak tourist season for people coming to the Great Smoky Mountains,” Alexander said after a Tennessee Restaurant Association meeting in Nashville.

Read more at our news partner’s website, tennessean.com.