House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) warned House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) against holding the government “hostage” through her crusade to protect illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children at the expense of the U.S. military and all other issues.

McCarthy criticized Pelosi on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo” for “whipping her members to vote against funding the government just for two weeks.” Congress faces a January 19 deadline to approve a spending resolution to keep federal offices open.

“And that is why we’re working on getting that budget agreement, to be able to ‘plus up’ the military,” McCarthy said. “But the Democrats are holding that hostage. And I think that’s wrong. We should not play with the military at any time with politics.”

Democrats are lobbying hard for Congress to protect illegal immigrants under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which President Donald Trump rescinded.

Trump set a March deadline for Congress to reform DACA or permanently repeal it. Congressional Democrats maintain that no funding bill can be reached if a DACA fix isn’t included.

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“Well, the real difficulty is [what] we had on some of the votes at the very end. You have the minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, whipping her members to vote against funding the government just for two weeks and it’s all over DACA,” McCarthy said, noting that DACA “doesn’t have to be dealt with until March.”

McCarthy said he would be attending Tuesday’s bipartisan meeting with President Donald Trump to discuss such issues as illegal immigration, DACA, and border security.

“We want to solve this problem, but most importantly, we don’t want to have to deal with this problem in the future,” McCarthy said. “So you’ve got to have border security. You’ve got to deal with chain migration, and it’s a place that everybody could find common ground and solve.”

Related: Former Dem Official Insists ‘Clean’ DREAM Act Would Help GOP

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The inability to reach a government funding agreement also holds serious consequences for military funding and national security concerns, McCarthy noted.

PoliZette writer Kathryn Blackhurst can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter.