Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania lambasted Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York over the government shutdown in an interview posted on social media Thursday, saying it was an “absolute failure.”
The federal government entered a partial shutdown at 12:01 a.m. Eastern Time on Oct. 1 after the Senate failed to pass a continuing resolution, falling short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a Democratic filibuster after the House of Representatives passed the short-term funding bill on Sept. 19. CNN Chief Congressional Correspondent Manu Raju asked Fetterman about Schumer’s claim that the shutdown benefits Democrats politically.
“Yeah, well, ask the hungry people on Saturday. You know, that’s the thing … Americans are not leverage,” Fetterman said. “This is not — this is not some shitty game show about who’s winning or whatever. It’s just like — like, we have to be better than this and just open this up. And I do talk to any number of Republicans, too. They agree that we have this conversation about extending these tax credits.”
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In an earlier part of the interview, Fetterman discussed his wife Gisele’s efforts to provide food for the less fortunate.
“I’m saying that I will witness it first-hand. My wife Gisele, she develops a free store in our community, and it distributes food three times a week, and her lines have already got longer and now I will encounter people that have no SNAP benefits starting on Saturday, and I don’t have an explanation for them,” Fetterman told Raju. “All I could say is I’m sorry. It’s an absolute failure, what occurred here for the last month, and now things are really gonna land. And imagine being a parent with a couple kids and how you’re going to fill their refrigerator and pack their lunches and get on with their lives when the things that they’ve depended on now is gone because we can’t even agree to just open things up.”
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly referred to as “food stamps,” assists roughly 42 million Americans. SNAP benefits will not be provided on Nov. 1 if a continuing resolution is not passed.
“Democrats, if we’re not allowed to just open this up, I mean, then our party has bigger problems than I thought we might have already. It’s like, that’s not controversial, pay everybody,” Fetterman told Raju. “And you have our workers here borrow over a third of a billion dollars to pay their own bills. Like, it’s a failure. And I like I said, to all of the viewers, I’m apologizing that we can’t even get our shit together and just open up our government.”
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