Ex-White House adviser Gary Cohn: Trump has to ‘get the government open’

President Trump’s former top economic adviser said Thursday that the president has “got to get the government open” as an ongoing shutdown has left scores of federal agencies shuttered for more than a month.

Gary Cohn said on MSNBC that Trump has a lot of “phenomenal ideas” that are “growing the economy” and “creating jobs,” but the former director of the National Economic Council acknowledged that the government needed to be reopened.

“The government needs to be open,” he said. “He’s got to get the government open.”

{mosads}Roughly 25 percent of the federal government has been shut down for 34 days and counting after Trump demanded more than $5 billion to fund a wall along the southern border. The shutdown has left hundreds of thousands of federal workers either furloughed or forced to work without pay. 

“Look, the government should be open,” Cohn said. “To put 800,000 government employees out of work to fight over a wall and immigration, we need immigration in the United States.”

“If we want to continue to grow our economy there’s only one way to do it,” he added. “Allow immigrants in the country. They should be legal, and we should have a mechanism for them to come into the country.”

Cohn, who left the administration in March amid differences with Trump over tariff policy, has been critical of the ongoing shutdown. He said last week the funding lapse was “completely wrong” and made “no sense whatsoever.”

The Senate is set to vote Thursday on a pair of measures that could end the shutdown, though neither is expected to receive the 60 votes needed to pass. The House has already passed multiple pieces of legislation to fund the closed government agencies.

If the shutdown stretches into next week, federal workers will miss a second paycheck.