Fetterman rails on his colleagues for not getting their ‘sh*t together’ with SNAP on the line amid the shutdown

CNN

By Alison Main, Manu Raju, CNN

(CNN) — Sen. John Fetterman was exasperated with his colleagues Thursday, as the Senate heads home in the stalemate’s fifth week and millions of Americans are due to lose federal food assistance this weekend.

“It’s an absolute failure what occurred here for the last month, and now things are really going to 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 Pennsylvania Democrat told CNN.

Fetterman said his wife helps distribute free food to the community and has already witnessed longer lines. He lamented that when he returns home this weekend, he’ll have to tell constituents who have lost their SNAP benefits, “I don’t have an explanation for them.”

The Democrat, who has been outspoken against shutting down the government in any form, has been one of just three in his caucus to routinely break from the party and vote with Republicans more than a dozen times to reopen the government.

The Senate left town on Thursday for the weekend with no measurable progress toward a deal to reopen the government, with impatience inside the US Capitol skyrocketing and critical social safety net programs at risk in the coming days. Senators will not return until Monday, which will mark day 34 of the shutdown – just two days shy of setting a new record for longest shutdown.

Key senators of both parties took part in some private meetings Thursday to discuss potential off-ramps, including how to get both parties to support a deal on long-term appropriations bills. But lawmakers involved in those talks offered no more clarity about whether it could indeed end the standoff.

Asked about the effort by some Senate Democrats to pass a bill to temporarily extend SNAP benefits, Fetterman questioned why Congress couldn’t also pay Capitol police officers, saying that “the world’s biggest lethal military in the world has relied on a donor to pay our service members last week. I mean, that’s a disgrace.”

“We have to find a way forward,” the senator said. He added that while he “fundamentally” believes there will be an effort to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits, as his fellow Democrats are demanding, his party must also consider those who receive other important benefits from the government.

“You have 2 million people on SNAP in my state, and over 400,000 are receiving those kind of tax credits,” he said.

“For a Democrat, I can’t imagine a more sacred part of who we fight for is people that, that depend on SNAP to feed themselves,” he said, later adding, “Our party has bigger problems than I thought we might have already. It’s like that’s not controversial. Pay everybody.”

“We can’t even get our shit together and just open up our government,” he lamented.

Responding to Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer’s prior suggestion that each day of the shutdown plays better politically for Democrats, Fetterman responded, “Ask the hungry people on Saturday.”

“Americans are not leverage. This is not, this is not some shitty game show about who’s winning or whatever. It’s just like we have to be better than this and just open this up,” he said.

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CNN’s Casey Riddle and Sarah Ferris contributed to this report.