White House director of legislative affairs Marc Short on Monday said "significant progress" has been made with Democrats on the hot button issues at the core of the government shutdown.
During an interview with CNN's "New Day" morning program, Short said it's confounding for the White House why Democrats "manufactured" a shutdown amid the progress.
"I'm perhaps too optimistic, but I feel like there's been significant progress," Short said on CNN.
"Democrats have moved significantly toward our position of the physical barriers that we're asking for," Short said. "And Democrats have asked us to say, -- look, as opposed to the 690,000 people who have work permits in the DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] program, would you be willing to consider that beyond, because their position is there were some who were either afraid to come out of the dark and to register or what not, and we've said, 'yes, we'd be willing to do that.'
"So, I think that honestly there's a lot of progress here," Short said.
"What's hard for us to understand is why we're having a manufactured shutdown when you're having progress in negotiations and you're shutting down the government over an issue that's not in front of you in the actual bill to keep the government afloat," Short said.
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