Rep. Tom Reed (R-Corning)

WASHINGTON – Congressman Tom Reed (R-Corning, NY) said Thursday he’s hoping for an end to the “political theater” accompanying the government shutdown, but offered no hope that it would end soon.

Reed told reporters in a conference call that “it’s amazing how folks won’t even talk to each other.”

The shutdown was in its 34th day on Thursday and is due in large part to President Donald Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion in funding for a border wall. Democrats in the House have said they wont negotiate border security funding until after the government is reopen and accuse the president of using the shutdown as leverage in his effort to get the funding.

Reed also said Thursday everyone is hung up on the word “wall” and that it’s border security the president is after, not a 2,200-mile sea-to-sea wall, he added.

The statement from Reed runs contrary to numerous times during his presidential campaign and while office when Trump specifically indicated he wanted build a “great wall” along the U.S.-Mexican border and he would have Mexico pay for it. By mid 2017, the Homeland Security Department acknowledged the wall wouldn’t be from “sea to shining sea.”

Last week Reed and a bipartisan group of members from the Problem Solvers Caucus met with President Trump and his aides for more than an hour discussing a possible way to break the gridlock but the corning republican refused to disclose what the president said about the shutdown during that meeting.

As WRFA reported last week, some 500 families across the 23rd Congressional District, which includes all of Chautauqua County, have not received a paycheck from the government during the shutdown. That was according to Congressman Tom Reed’s Office.

We were not able to get a specific number for families in Chautauqua County or the Jamestown area. However, the Post-Journal is reporting that 128 families have received assistance this week through a special food distribution by the Food Bank of WNY and held at the Salvation Army in Jamestown. Some of those families include those affected by the shutdown – though a specific number was not provided in the report.

In addition to federal workers not receiving pay, the shutdown is also affecting residents who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP and formerly referred to as food stamps.

Families that rely on SNAP, including those in Chautauqua County, received their SNAP benefits for the month of February earlier than expected.

According to the Post-Journal, local social services districts including the one here in the county had to recertify SNAP recipients early and it was done last week, so SNAP recipients received a larger than normal amount of money on the EBT card because it also included February’s amount.

As a result, the SNAP recipients are being advised to ration their food credits through the end of February.

Rep. Tom Reed (R-Corning)

WASHINGTON – The threat of a U.S. government shutdown this weekend appeared to recede on Tuesday after President Donald Trump backed away from a demand that Congress include funding for his planned border wall with Mexico in a spending bill.

Even if the fight over wall funding is over, Republicans and Democrats still have difficult issues to resolve as they face a Friday night deadline when existing money expires for many federal agencies.

There was growing sentiment among lawmakers that they would need to pass a short-term extension of current spending, possibly of one week’s duration, in order to finish negotiating longer-term legislation for funding the government through the end of September.

But on Tuesday night, some leading Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate expressed optimism that Congress could pass the longer-term bill and avoid having to rely on another temporary extension of last year’s funding levels.

During a conference call Tuesday morning, Congressman Tom Reed (R-Corning) also addressed the issue, saying he is in favor of keeping government running, and that as co-chair of the house bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, he and other lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are supporting a proposed funding plan that would avoid a shutdown by holding off on the more contentious issues.

“We have taken a position where we would support a clean funding bill for the rest of 2017, essentially meaning we would keep the ideological debates out of this process,” Reed said. “I think the more that we can have a clean debate on just funding levels, I think we could come to a  rapid agreement to keep the government running, and then take care of issues – things that I support like the border wall and border security – we can deal with those outside of this shutdown deadline that is coming upon us.”

President Trump removed a crucial sticking point when he said on Monday he may wait until Republicans begin drafting the budget blueprint for the fiscal year that starts on Oct. 1 to seek wall funding.

While Reed is in favor of keeping the government running, that hasn’t always been the case. In the fall of 2013, Reed voted four times in favor of resolutions that place the government on the path to an eventual shutdown. On Tuesday he acknowledged his past voting record.

“There have been times when you have to vote the interest of the district and the nation and we’ve done that when it comes to funding bills,” Reed said. “But as we go forward, I do believe we try to be part of the efforts to avoid that type of conflict. I think in this present situation we have learned a lot from prior votes and prior situations, and what we’re trying to do is be a positive voice for governing for the American people.”

The president’s fellow Republicans control both chambers of Congress, but the current spending bill will need 60 votes to clear the 100-member Senate, where Republicans hold only 52 seats. Democratic leaders had said they would not support a bill that included funds for the wall.

During a conference call with local media on Thursday afternoon, Reed stood by his decision to be among the 144 members of the House to vote against the spending measure, which extends government spending for next three months, but does nothing to resolve the fundamental issues of spending and deficits that divide Republicans and Democrats in Congress.

Reed said as far as he was concerned, the bill did nothing to address the real financial problems that the nation is facing…

“I didn’t go to Washington DC to kick the can down the road,” Reed explained to regional media. “This question of our national debt – this question of our fiscal crisis, our debt crisis and our potential currency crisis needs to be dealt with. There was nothing, nothing, in the proposal [Wednesday night] that dealt with those issues. To me it was simply about saying, ‘We need to deal with this question now, sooner rather than later.'”

Rep. Tom Reed (R-Corning)

Reed also explained that he cast his “no vote” to express his frustration with congress and its inability to immediately address financial issues, even though it could have done so prior to Wednesday’s vote.

“There were opportunities to do at a minimum some spending reductions that we all agree upon and the honest proposal that we put together, in a bipartisan way,” Reed said. “There’s about $230 billion worth of spending reductions that the president has proposed in his own budget that Democrats had seemed to support and Republicans had seemed to support. So why don’t we at least do that which we agree? At a minimum, why don’t we end the special treatment for members of congress? That would have sent a signal to America that the culture of DC is changing and that’s something I was willing to support and would have voted for if it came to the floor of the House.”

Reed did say that as of Thursday, he’ll try to remain optimistic that some type of an agreement can be reached to address spending and deficits prior the January 15 deadline, but he also believes that the same differences that were present in the weeks building up to this most recent deadline will also still be present as lawmakers approach the new one at the start of 2014.