White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney pushed back against CNN’s Chris Cuomo over the merits of amnesty and the fate of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients, Tuesday on “New Day.”

“You can’t say I’m going to fix DACA and not illegal immigration. That’s not being presidential and that doesn’t solve the problem,” Mulvaney said. “Simply waiving a wand and giving amnesty to 12 or 13 million people may solve a problem for them, but it doesn’t solve the problem for the other 300 million people who live here.”

Cuomo called illegal immigration an “imaginary crisis” and said dreamers were “not a problem” but actually a financial benefit to the U.S.

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“According to the center for American progress, if you get rid of them you’d cost us $433 billion over ten years or $43 billion a year in gross domestic product. You’d cost us money by getting rid of them,” Cuomo said.

“You’re not going to get me to disagree on the value of legal immigration,” Mulvaney shot back. “Illegal immigration is a different topic. I’m not going to debate a Center for American Progress report on your show. Come on now.”

Cuomo tried calling Mulvaney out for arguing with the numbers and Mulvaney slammed Cuomo for choosing a partisan liberal source.

“Center for American Progress? Seriously,” Mulvaney said. “Let’s find a couple of different studies on both sides of the argument. You know I can find something from some right-wing –”

Cuomo cut Mulvaney off and asked again if deporting dreamers would cost the country money and Mulvaney said, “I think it’s bad for the nation to have bad illegal immigration policies and that’s what we have right now.”

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