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Republican Sen. Richard Shelby, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he is going to support the Mitch McConnell’s position when it comes to not bringing up any of the appropriations bills from the House this week.

It’s getting harder and harder for some Republicans to take the heat on the government shutdown and the House is expected to pass individual appropriations bills this week that the Senate already supported. But Shelby said he supports McConnell’s decision not to bring them up.

“I’d rather the Congress do it. The Congress has failed to do it. At this point, we failed the American people. Let’s be honest," the Alabama lawmaker said.

He said it would be “futile” to put bills on the floor that won’t get President Trump’s signature.

“I guess it's optics versus substance," Shelby said.

Asked if he would support Trump declaring a national emergency for funding for the wall, Shelby said, "I don’t know we will have to wait and see what he has to say about it."

“Let’s be honest. The shutdown is not nice," the Alabama lawmaker said. “It’s a partial shutdown, but it’s about a total of 800,000 workers and a lot of ‘em are going to be without paychecks soon and we need to do everything we can to do our job and do it on time.”