Cheney requests salary to be withheld during shutdown

WASHINGTON, DC – Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) requested on Saturday that her congressional pay be suspended, as long as the current government shutdown is in effect.

Although Cheney voted for border wall funding in the House of Representatives, a compromise was not met in the Senate, leading to a partial shutdown of government entities at midnight Saturday.

In a letter to Phillip Kiko, chief administrative officer of the Congress of the United States, Cheney stated that, “It is my understanding that Members of Congress will continue to receive their salary despite the ongoing partial government shutdown. I do not believe it is appropriate for Members of Congress to continue to be paid while we remain in a partial government shutdown. As such, I am asking that you please withhold my salary for as long as the shutdown lasts.”

While Cheney has been a large supporter of the policies of President Donald Trump, on Sunday the representative appeared on CBS television’s “Face the Nation”, where she split with the president on a recent decision to pull U.S. troops from the war in Syria.

“I am deeply, deeply concerned and I oppose strongly the president’s decision apparently to withdraw troops from Syria. The apparent decision that we’re now going to be looking at withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. I think this president has done a lot of very good things in terms of beginning to rebuild our military, getting out of the Iranian nuclear agreement. But these two decisions would be disastrous. They would really, in many ways, hand the victories to our enemies to Iran, to ISIS in Syria, the Taliban, al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. It’s a very dangerous path to go down and we shouldn’t be going down it. We ought to make sure that we keep our troops there in order to prevent the establishment of safe havens from those groups that want to attack us.”