Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) issued an apology Thursday on behalf of Senate Democrats for their failure to vote to end the ongoing government shutdown.
In an interview with CNN’s Manu Raju, Fetterman expressed frustration that federal workers remain unpaid and that many families may struggle to feed their children as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits are set to expire.
He said he was sorry for the situation and acknowledged his party’s role in the stalemate.
“And like I said, to all of the viewers, I’m apologizing that we can’t even get our s— together and just open up our government,” Fetterman said, per the New York Post.
The government shutdown has entered its fourth week, with Republicans and Democrats in the Senate still deadlocked over spending legislation to start the new fiscal year. The stalemate is now jeopardizing the SNAP, also known as food stamps, which the U.S. Department of Agriculture warns could leave roughly 42 million Americans without benefits if the shutdown continues.
New SNAP funding was supposed to be distributed Nov. 1.
In his interview with Raju, Fetterman said he expects to witness the effects of the SNAP funding lapse firsthand when he returns home to Pennsylvania.
“I’m saying that I’ll witness it firsthand,” he said. “My wife, Giselle, she develops the Free Store in our community. 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.”
He then proceeded to apologize on behalf of his Senate Democratic colleagues.
“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 going to land,” Fetterman said. “And imagine being a parent with a couple kids and how you’re going to fill the 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 Pennsylvania Democrat, who has consistently voted for a continuing resolution that would fund and reopen the government, then criticized his party for failing to reach an agreement with majority Republicans.
“If a Democrat — you know, 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,” he said, “And you have our workers here borrowed over a third of a billion dollars to pay their own bills.”
He added: “Like, it’s a failure.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has instructed his caucus to keep the government shut down, raged at President Donald Trump in a video posted to social media on Wednesday as Americans and the media turn against his party.
“Donald Trump is a vindictive and heartless man. Never before in American history has a president cut off SNAP during a shutdown, including Trump in his first term,” Schumer said in his post.
“But now he is manufacturing a hunger crisis to bludgeon the American people so he doesn’t have to fix healthcare,” he added.
A president cannot create budgets out of thin air; spending bills must be written and passed by Congress. The president’s role, then, is to either sign them into law or veto them.
Schumer and Democrats have been demanding Congress continue subsidizing Obamacare they extended the subsidies during the COVID-19 pandemic but chose to time-limit them; they are now set to expire in December.
Republican leaders have said they are willing to negotiate new subsidies for Obamacare – a program which Democrats a decade ago said would finally “fix” the country’s healthcare system – but not until a clean continuing resolution to reopen the government is passed.
