Democrats want to shelve stalled negotiations over President Donald Trump's border wall and end the longest-ever partial government shutdown as soon as possible. But Republicans, such as Sen. David Perdue of Georgia, don't want Trump to throw away what they see as his strongest bargaining chip. Perdue balked when asked Wednesday on CNBC's "Squawk Box" about the calls from Democratic leaders, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, to reopen the government and continue separate border security talks. "Right now, what the Democrats are saying is, 'Well look, give us what we want and maybe we'll come back in two or three months and talk about what you want.' That's not the way negotiations work in the real world," Perdue said. When pressed on the Democrats' offer to reopen the government, Perdue suggested that such an agreement would undermine Trump's efforts to pressure his opponents into funding a border wall.

Perdue spokeswoman Casey Black said in a phone call after this story was originally published that the senator is in favor of ending the shutdown and is trying to get to a solution on border security. Trump told Schumer in December that he would be "proud" to shut down the government in pursuit of constructing a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border — the central promise of his 2016 presidential campaign. But he quickly reverted to blaming Democrats for refusing to allocate money toward a wall as part of any spending deal to fund the whole government. Republicans have been quick to point out that Democrats have in the recent past been willing to provide much more money for a border wall as part of broader immigration reform efforts, none of which came to pass. Trump is currently asking for $5.7 billion, which the Office of Management and Budget recently estimated would help build fewer than 250 miles of wall on the nearly 2,000-mile border. Schumer and other Democrats, however, argue that holding firm against Trump's wall proposal in this standoff will prevent the president from using government shutdowns as a negotiating tactic in the future. "The last thing you want to do is reward the president's behavior of holding all these folks hostage," Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Wednesday on "Squawk Box." "If this tactic at all proves to be successful, you'll see it again on debt ceiling, see it again on the end-of-the-year spending bills," Warner added. He noted "the amount of economic hurt that is taking place at the family level and on the general economy level" in Virginia and Washington, D.C., already.