Rep McCollum is the second of my three Congressional reps to respond to my suggestion:
Thank you for contacting me regarding the ongoing partial government shutdown, I appreciate hearing from you.
For the past 32 days, three dozen federal agencies have been shut down or forced to operate without funding. More than 800,000 federal employees are furloughed or working without pay. These federal workers and their families are suffering and struggling while President Trump and Republicans in Congress hold them hostage as political pawns. This is a crisis manufactured by the White House.
Mr. Trump campaigned for president by promising that Mexico would pay for a border wall. Now, President Trump is forcing the American people to pay for the wall while he refuses to fund federal agencies until he gets his way. The economic pain of this shutdown is now spreading beyond federal workers and their families to small businesses, families dependent on food assistance, non-profits, Tribal nations, local governments, and the list goes on. This is an unnecessary and dangerous strategy President Trump and Congressional Republicans are executing. The GOP plan to disrupt the lives of everyday Americans is simply wrong.
Since January 3rd, Democrats in the U.S. House have passed multiple bills to immediately re-open government, including a bipartisan bill (H.R. 266) I authored to fully fund and re-open the Department of the Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Forest Service, and a number of other agencies. Yet this Republican shutdown has no end in sight because President Trump and Senate Majority Leader McConnell refuse to re-open the government before negotiating on immigration and border security.
I will continue to work to open every federal agency and put every federal worker back on the job. It is time for responsible Republicans to put President Trump on notice and fulfill their duties under the Constitution. I urge my Republican colleagues to join Democrats and re-open the government, without President Trump’s support if needed. Together, two-thirds of Congress can override a presidential veto and demonstrate to all our constituents that we can govern responsibly even if President Trump refuses to.
Thank you again for contacting me about this critical issue.
Sincerely,

Betty McCollum
Member of Congress
The usual boilerplate.
