Two top Donald Trump administration officials on Thursday made public remarks that appeared to show what Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, quoted by Newsweek , called “callous indifference” to the pain of federal employees who have now gone more than a month without paychecks as the government shutdown over Trump’s demand that Congress allocate funding for his “border wall” approaches its 35th day.
One of those officials was Trump’s top economic adviser, 71-year-old Larry Kudlow (pictured above), a former Fox News commentator and Ronald Reagan administration official who was named by Trump to head the National Economic council in April, as the Inquisitr reported.
In an appearance on Fox, Kudlow referred to the effects of the shutdown as a “glitch,” as Talking Points Memo reported. The shutdown has left 800,000 government employees without pay, many of them forced to show up for work anyway because they are in “essential” positions, such as aviation safety and other security-related fields.
“It’ll snap back from its glitch, it will snap back from its anomaly,” he said on Fox , describing what he said would be the shutdown’s minimal effect on the United States economy. “An awful lot of smart people out there trying to make these estimates. It is like counting angels on the head of a pin. Can I be honest? We don’t know.”
In earlier remarks to a group of press representatives, Kudlow described federal workers required to work without pay as “volunteering,” according to Breakfast Media White House reporter Andrew Feinberg, who reported Kudlow’s remarks on Twitter .
Asked later by Feinberg to clarify how workers going with no pay were “volunteering,” Kudlow called the unpaid workers “wonderful people” willing to deliberately self-sacrifice, according to his remarks on C-Span .
“They honor us,” Kudlow said of the unpaid workers. “They do it because of their love for the country, and the office of the presidency, and presumably their allegiance to President Trump. But whatever. They’re doing it. Give them some credit.”
But according to a poll released last week by the Government Business Council and GovExec.com , 72 percent of federal workers said that they oppose the government shutdown, with a whopping 64 percent saying that they “strongly oppose” it.
Kudlow’s remarks came after Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross made remarks earlier on Thursday in which he said that “I don’t really quite understand why” federal workers have been reportedly seeking assistance at food banks and homeless shelters, according to CNBC , adding “there’s no real reason why they shouldn’t be able to get a loan.”
