The Trump administration’s former top economic adviser and five former Department of Homeland Security chiefs — including President Trump’s ex-chief of staff John Kelly — have joined the growing, bipartisan call for an end to the government shutdown.
“The government needs to be open, the government needs to be open. He’s got to get the government open,” Gary Cohn, the president’s former economic adviser, told MSNBC from the economic summit at Davos, Switzerland.
Cohn, a free trader, quit as director of the National Economic Council in March after Trump slapped steep tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.
The former DHS brass said in a letter sent Wednesday that it was “unconscionable” for department employees to have to rely on food banks and charity to get by without paychecks.
“DHS employees who protect the traveling public, investigate and counter-terrorism, and protect critical infrastructure should not have to rely on the charitable generosity of others for assistance in feeding their families and paying their bills while they steadfastly focus on the mission at hand,” the letter said.
Others who signed the letter were Tom Ridge, Michael Chertoff, Janet Napolitano and Jeh Johnson.
The House planned to vote Thursday morning on a bill that would temporarily reopen DHS while negotiations continued on border security.
Meanwhile, the Senate was poised to take a new approach to ending the partial government shutdown — by actually taking votes.
But competing bills appeared likely to fail Thursday, caught in a poisonous Washington stalemate.
Either measure would reopen federal agencies and pay 800,000 federal workers who are days from missing yet another paycheck.
Republicans would couple ending the 34-day shutdown with $5.7 billion for Trump’s coveted border wall and revamping immigration laws.
Democrats would reopen agency doors for three weeks while bargainers seek a budget accord.
Twin defeats might spur the two sides into a more serious effort to strike a compromise.
Almost every proposal needs 60 votes to advance in the Senate, which is under 53-47 Republican control.
“It’s hard to imagine 60 votes developing for either one,” said GOP Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri.
GOP moderates such as Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine are expected to vote for the Democratic plan, as is Cory Gardner of Colorado, one of the few Republicans representing a state carried by Hillary Clinton in 2016.
With the impacts of the shutdown becoming increasingly painful, however, lawmakers on both sides were trumpeting their willingness to compromise in the battle over border security and immigration issues such as protection against deportation for so-called Dreamers, immigrants brought to the country illegally as children.
“It’s clear what the president wants. It’s clear what we want. If you have a negotiation, both parties are going to put on the table what they want,” said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland.
“By definition a successful negotiation gets to a place where both sides feel they got something, right?”
With Post wires