Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Thursday he doesn’t “quite understand why” federal workers hurt by the partial government shutdown need to go to a food bank.
Roughly 800,000 federal employees are furloughed or are working without pay as President Trump and congressional Democrats remain at an impasse for a spending deal due to a disagreement over border security funding. The record-breaking shutdown is now in its 34th day.
Asked about these workers getting food from shelters and other places during an interview on CNBC, Ross said, “I know they are, and I don’t really quite understand why.”
WILBUR ROSS downplays 800k workers missing checks as “a third of a percent on our GDP. So it’s just like it’s a gigantic number.”
ROSS then says this about fed workers going to homeless shelters to get food: “I don’t quite understand why.” Says they should just go take out loans pic.twitter.com/0sOmZGEozD
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 24, 2019
“Because, as I mentioned before, the obligations that they would undertake, say borrowing from a bank or a credit union, are in effect federally guaranteed,” he added.
A number of credit unions and banks are offering low-interest or interest-free loans to federal workers, who are guaranteed back pay, but as the shutdown drags on it’s unclear how helpful this financial assistance for day-to-day life expenses will be in the long run.
