Dem senator vows to donate salary for each day of government shutdown

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) announced early Saturday morning that she will again donate her salary to charity for every day the federal government is shut down.

“I cannot take a salary during a government shutdown knowing that so many federal workers in Nevada and across the country will go without pay,” Cortez Masto tweeted shortly after the shutdown began at midnight. “I’ll be donating my salary to a Nevada charity for every day of the Trump shutdown.”

Cortez Masto also criticized President Trump in another tweet for bringing the country “into yet another crisis right before the holidays,” saying “We should be working together to end to this shutdown.” 

The Nevada Democrat also donated her salary during a government shutdown in January.

{mosads}Congress failed to meet the midnight deadline on Friday to reach an agreement to fund numerous federal agencies, resulting in a partial shutdown.

Agencies including the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, Treasury, Homeland Security, Interior, State, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and the Environmental Protection Agency are impacted by the expired funding. 

The squabble over funding centered around money to pay for Trump’s long-desired wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Trump said earlier this month that he would be “proud” to trigger a shutdown over border wall funding but reversed on Friday, saying Democrats are to blame.

Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) pointed fingers at Trump’s “temper tantrum.”

“President Trump has said more than 25 times that he wanted a shutdown and now he has gotten what he wanted,” Schumer and Pelosi said in a joint statement shortly after the midnight deadline to fund the government passed.