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MSN.com
‘Our Country Is Being Run by Children’:
Shutdown’s End Brings Relief and Frustration
By Jack Healy, Kate Taylor and Tara Siegel Bernard
Some cried with relief. Their 35-day nightmare of missing bill
payments, working without paychecks, asking strangers for money and
visiting food pantries was finally ending.
But many of the federal workers who have been furloughed or working for
free since December were leery of the three-week deal reached on Friday
to reopen the government. New worries gnawed: How long before they got
paid? Would federal contractors see even a dime of back pay?
And most of all, after the longest shutdown in American history, would
they and 800,000 other federal workers be back in the same mess in
three weeks if President Trump and Democrats do not reach an accord on
whether to fund his proposed border wall?
“This was all for nothing, basically,” said Angela Kelley, 51, a
furloughed worker for the Bureau of Land Management in Milwaukee who
picked up shifts as an Uber driver to earn money to buy gas and
groceries as the shutdown dragged on.
On Friday, Mr. Trump praised federal workers as “fantastic people” and
“incredible patriots” and acknowledged the toll they had suffered. But
several federal employees said they still felt angry after being
treated like pawns, they said, in a five-week-long Washington standoff.
They said the shutdown had left deep scars on their families and
finances and undermined their faith in elected leaders, and in the
careers they had chosen.
The New York Times talked with more than a dozen federal workers and
contractors — from wildland firefighters to Coast Guard families to
museum security guards — about how they had survived the shutdown, and
the uncertainty they now face.
‘They Chose to Break Faith’
John Hare, 42, is one of thousands of Coast Guard employees and
retirees worried that they may find themselves in the same precarious
position a few weeks from now.
Because the Coast Guard is the only branch of the military that is part
of the Department of Homeland Security, it was affected by the
shutdown. About 55,000 active-duty, reserve and civilian employees had
already missed two paychecks, while another 50,000 military retirees
would have gone without a pension payment for the first time on Feb. 1.
After 22 years of service, Mr. Hare was forced to retire from the Coast
Guard last August after learning he had a rare form of cancer that
spread from his appendix. His wife had to stop working to care for him,
and missing Mr. Hare’s pension check of $2,698 would have put a
significant dent into the family budget.
“The faith in our leadership to be able to negotiate with each other
has been broken,” Mr. Hare, of Rolesville, N.C., said on Friday. “And
they chose to break faith with the U.S. military.”
“I certainly question the hostage-taking of government employees’
paychecks,” he said. “And nobody that was in power who had the power to
stop this, none of them were injured” by the shutdown.
“It is less a sense of relief because nothing has been solved.”
‘This Has Damaged My Family’
Yvette Hicks, 40, a security guard at the Smithsonian museums, said she
woke up on Friday and prayed, once again, for the shutdown to end. As a
single mother, she said the shutdown had taken a toll on her family’s
budget and her own mental health.
When she learned on Friday she might be returning to work, Ms. Hicks
said she had been crying. Her 14-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son
were due home from school soon, and she was trying to put up a brave
face for them. She said her son, Kaden, had nevertheless told his
teachers that his mother was now sad all the time.
Ms. Hicks said her family had once been homeless, and that she believed
her job at the Smithsonian was a path to stability. She even saved up
enough to book a spring-break vacation for her children to an indoor
water park in Virginia. But as the bills piled up and her paychecks
stopped, she said she canceled the trip and lost the $350 deposit she
had paid for a room.
“It’s just a hurting thing,” she said. “This has damaged my family.”
‘Our Country Is Being Run by Children’
Anthony Powers, 35, had begun thinking about leaving his 15-year career
as part of an elite team of wildland firefighters with the United
States Forest Service in Southern California. He was that frustrated
with his nation’s leaders.
“Our country is being run by children,” he said.
On Friday, he was relieved but not elated, noting that everything could
shut down again soon.
Mr. Powers and his colleagues typically spend this time of year
clearing away brush to help lessen fire danger in the coming year. None
of that has been happening for the last month or so, and his team needs
more than three weeks to get the job done. He also has a national
conference set for the end of February, and the short-term opening
leaves him in limbo. Is it going to happen? Should he plan for it? Not
plan for it?
“There’s been so much planning for this to go into the long-term,” he
said. “Now it’s like, where do you reset?”
‘So Out of Touch With the American People’
Nic Trujillo, 34, a single father and collections representative for
the Internal Revenue Service in Ogden, Utah, said the shutdown had done
financial and emotional damage.
He had not paid rent in January because he needed to pay other
expenses. On Friday, he and his 6-year-old son were just one week away
from being evicted and having to move in with extended family.
Staying at home had also left him depressed. Before he was ordered to
return to work without pay on Jan. 18, his natural night-owl tendencies
had taken over. He would stay up late, get up to get his son off to
school, then sleep for much of the day.
“I haven’t really done anything. I haven’t really gone anywhere,” he
said, explaining that he didn’t want to waste gas. “It’s just been a
very depressive time.”
He said he blamed both the president and Congress for the shutdown,
saying that none of them knew what it was like to live paycheck to
paycheck.
“They are so out of touch with the American people that it’s
unacceptable.”
‘I’m Staying in Shutdown Mode’
Kim Howell, 34, whose husband is in the Coast Guard in Boston and has
been working 12-hour night shifts throughout the shutdown, said she
didn’t feel much relief on Friday. She said she didn’t expect that her
husband would get any back pay for a week or two. And then there was
the possibility that the government would shut down again in three
weeks.
Ms. Howell said her family had been fortunate because she works for a
tech startup. But the loss of her husband’s income strained them. They
had to put off rent payments, utility bills, and cellphone, cable and
internet bills.
She had visited a food pantry that had been set up in Boston for Coast
Guard families. She worried about the impact on her three children, who
are 9, 13 and 14. Her oldest child told her he felt helpless and
anxious watching his parents try to navigate the crisis. She did not
blame any particular party, but said she felt betrayed. And she worried
the dysfunction was far from over.
“I’m staying in shutdown mode,” she said. “That’s the only responsible
thing to do right now.”
Read this and other articles at MSN.com
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