Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins told Newsmax Tuesday said the shutdown has been a “bad nightmare” for veterans who work for the federal government.

Collins told "Finnerty" many veterans work as air traffic controllers or as Transportation Security Administration agents and have been going without a paycheck for the past 42 days.

"All military members, unfortunately, we're not even able to be paid," Collins said. "You had a lot of people still working within the military who were not getting paid."

The secretary said Democrats claimed they were fighting for Obamacare, but they were really fighting to give more money to insurance companies.

"It just shows their priorities," Collins said. "They're proposing to give more money to insurance companies so they can be bribed to keep rates low.

"But yet at the same point, they keep 37,000 of my workers not working without pay.

"They keep veterans who are trying to transition into civilian world, away from getting their transition assistance so that they can get to educational benefits and the things they do to start a new life," he said.

"That's what bothers me."

Collins said he encourages veterans who feel disillusioned about the state of the country to continue to fight.

"There are some people like myself, President [Donald] Trump and others who are working to change this. And as long as veterans keep speaking out, people do listen.

"The vast majority of American citizens realize that the very freedoms that they expect every day are not there because of lawyers, press, or anybody else," he added.

"They're there because veterans were willing to stand up and go and defend this country and keep us free. They just got to keep going."

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