President Donald Trump‘s Commerce Secretary,Wilbur Ross, on Thursday offered little sympathy for the approximately 800,000 park workers, air traffic controllers and other federal government workers who are unpaid and struggling in the ongoing shutdown.
Whenasked on CNBC’sSquawk Boxabout some employees turning to “homeless shelters to get food,” Ross, who is reportedto have assets numbering $700 million, replied: “Well I know they are, and I don’t really quite understand why.”
He said he felt “sorry for the individuals that have hardship cases,” but he downplayed the overall economic impact of the shutdown: “800,000 workers … you’re talking about a third of a percent on our GDP, so it’s not like it’s a gigantic number overall.”
Because of the guarantee of these future paychecks, Ross said he believed that banks and other lenders should be “making credit available” to the unpaid workers who need money in the interim.
Ross said the biggest downside would be workers having to pay “a little bit of interest” on the loans until their back pay is issued.
However contractors such asSmithsonian security guard Donna Kelly, who turned to food stamps to eat, may never receive any compensation for their forced time off.
Inanother clip from his appearance CNBC, Ross also said that it’s “kind of disappointing” that air traffic controllers are calling in sick. When told they couldn’t afford to take care of their families, he replied, “They are eventually going to be paid.”
In addition to the 800,000 federal workers, another 1.2 million federal contractors are also affected,according to economist andNew York Timescolumnist Paul Krugman.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi responded to Ross’s remarks,saying: “Is this the ‘let them eat cake’ kind of attitude, or ‘call your father for money’ or ‘this is character-building for you, it’s all going to end up very well?’ ”
Others jumped in on Twitter.
Walter Shaub, former head of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics and a Trump critic,wrote thatthis “malignant indifference is why we have the Trump shutdown.”
A White House reporter for Yahoo, Hunter Walker,added this bit of coloraround Ross’ remarks: “I’ve seen [him] padding around the West Wing in custom made velvet loafers adorned with the Commerce Department seal.”
source: people.com
