Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman offers a solution to ending the government shutdown
Activist investor Bill Ackman, the founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, lit up Twitter on Thursday night offering a solution to ending the government shutdown.
“Why should members of the Congress be paid while workers for the Federal government go unpaid? If we fixed this inequity, we would no longer have government shutdowns,” the 52-year-old activist investor tweeted.
In a separate tweet, Ackman shared a “really important” speech from Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) calling out Sen. Tex Cruz (R-TX) for his "crocodile tears." He encouraged his more than 23,000 followers to watch the entire 28-minute video.
"These crocodile tears that the senator from Texas is crying for first responders are too hard for me to take. They're too hard for me to take, because when the senator from Texas shut this government down in 2013, my state was flooded. It was under water," Bennet said.
Bennet said people lost their lives as a result.
"People were killed. People's houses were destroyed. Their small businesses were ruined. Forever."
Bennet continued to lambast Cruz for supporting the "rinkydink" and "medieval" wall the president wants to build based on a "broken" campaign promise. He added that it’s “ludicrous” that America is shut down over a promise “America is not interested in having [Trump] keep.”
"This idea that he was going to build a medieval wall across the southern border of Texas, taken from the farmers and ranchers that were there and have the Mexicans pay for it, isn't true! That's why we're here because he's now saying the taxpayers have to pay for it. That's not what he said during his campaign — over and over and over again he said, 'Mexico would pay for the wall.' Over and over again,” Bennet said.
Ackman joined Twitter in June 2017 and until Thursday evening had only tweeted about investments such as Chipotle (CMG) and ADP (ADP) or upcoming media appearances on financial television.
The government shutdown entered its 35th day on Friday, making it the longest in history.
Julia La Roche is a finance reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter.
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