Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., apologized Thursday on behalf of Senate Democrats who have failed to end the ongoing government shutdown.
In an interview with CNN’s Manu Raju, Fetterman expressed frustration over stalled negotiations and the toll the shutdown is taking on federal workers and families who depend on food assistance. “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,” he said.
Now entering its fourth week, the shutdown has frozen paychecks for thousands of federal workers and put key programs at risk. One of the biggest impacts is on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which could leave roughly 42 million Americans without benefits if the impasse continues, according to the USDA.
Fetterman said the consequences are already visible in his home state. “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 told Raju.
He apologized directly to those affected, calling the situation “an absolute failure.” “Imagine being a parent with a couple kids and how you’re going to fill the refrigerator and pack their lunches … when the things that they’ve depended on now is gone because we can’t even agree to just open things up,” he said.
Fetterman didn’t hold back on criticizing his own party. “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,” he said. “It’s like, that’s not controversial. Pay everybody.”
He noted that many federal workers are now borrowing money just to get by. “Our workers here borrowed over a third of a billion dollars to pay their own bills,” Fetterman said. “Like, it’s a failure.”