[Task&Purpose] Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan said Wednesday he's won White House and bipartisan support for a bill to pay the nation's Coast Guard personnel during the shutdown.
He called the service members the hardest-hit of federal employees affected by the unprecedented lapse in government funding.
"I just got out of a fairly lengthy meeting with the president in the Oval Office," Sullivan said. "We talked about this, and he said he's supportive of the bill."
"We're making progress," he said.
Sullivan pushed for the bill's passage in a speech on the Senate floor Tuesday, the same day Coast Guard personnel nationwide missed their first paycheck during the closure.
"As you know, the partial government shutdown is negatively impacting federal workers, but none, none more so than the brave men and women of the U.S. Coast Guard," said Sullivan, chair of the Senate Commerce subcommittee on Security, with jurisdiction over the Coast Guard.
He said the bill would cover more than 41,000 active-duty Coast Guard personnel and retirees. About 1,908 active-duty Coast Guardsmen work in Alaska. The Coast Guard falls under the Department of Homeland Security, one of nine departments whose funding lapsed, but Coast Guard personnel are deemed essential and are working without pay. 
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