Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) had harsh words for his fellow Democrats after they once again voted to shut down the government earlier this week.
The partial government shutdown began at midnight Friday after all Democrats with the exception of Fetterman refused to back. funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Under a deal brokered in part by the White House, Congress passed a funding measure that will fund all federal departments and agencies, with the exception of DHS, throughout the end of the fiscal year.
Democrats have been holding out for a number of anti-ICE “reforms,” a number of which have been described as non-starters by Republicans. The partial shutdown will also have no impact on the Trump Administration’s deportation agenda, as funding for ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is secured through last year’s Big Beautiful Bill spending package.
In effect, Democrats moved to shut down agencies like the Transportation Security Agency (TSA), a decision that is expected to lead to air travel delays as workers are forced to go without pay. The shutdown will also affect the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), U.S. Coast Guard, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and other vital national security agencies.
“Well, my issue is like, hey, I stand with all the 270,000 government workers that are not going to get paid again, again,” Fetterman, who was a vocal critic of the record-setting Democrat-led shutdown last year, told Fox News.
“This is the second time. We, every Democrat, know that shutting DHS down will not have no impact on ICE. Even the director confirmed to my face in a hearing just this week saying it has no impact because they already were funded with the big beautiful bill. I did not vote for that, but what I will say that’s now why are all the Democrats going to shut down our entire DHS where FEMA and the Coast Guard and our cyber security agency when we all know that it has no impact on ICE.”
Fetterman noted that as a Democrat, he is in favor of reforms to federal immigration enforcement policies, but see’s a shutdown as a means to use federal workers as props and damage the economy.
“So now why can’t we just explain to our base and say, ‘look we we could have had another two weeks for more kinds of negotiations, we just shut it down’ and I refuse to do that,” he said. “It’s wrong to shut our government down, and especially for the things that we want, those kinds of reforms.”
