Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin doesn’t want to talk to Congress about the ongoing government shutdown‘s effect on the economy.
Mnuchin declined to appear at a Thursday morning hearing hosted by the House Ways and Means Committee on the shutdown’s economic impact as it enters its second month, Mother Jones reported.
More than 70,000 employees of Mnuchin’s agency, which includes the Internal Revenue Service, are currently impacted by the shutdown with some 45,000 of them working without pay.
Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) sent Mnuchin a letter on January 16 inviting him to the hearing, according to Mother Jones, but the Treasury responded by saying it would instead send other officials with more knowledge about the agency’s shutdown plans instead.
“The Department has acted in good faith to meet the Committee’s legitimate need for information concerning the impact of the current shutdown,” Treasury officials said in their response to the committee. “If the purpose of the upcoming hearing is to inform Congress and the public, we are confident that goal will be best served by testimony from the senior Department officials with the deepest and broadest expertise on the subject of the hearing.”
The partial government shutdown, now the longest in American history, has caused more than 800,000 federal workers to go weeks without pay, putting many in precarious financial situations.
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