While Republicans and Democrats remain locked in a budget stalemate that has shut down the federal government, some workers cast into limbo said they are already feeling stressed over how they will make ends meet.
The government shutdown entered its second day on Thursday with no resolution imminent, leaving some furloughed workers like Mark Cochran worried about how he and his family will get by without pay.
Cochran, who works for the National Park Service in Newburg, Pennsylvania, is one of about 750,000 federal workers slated to be furloughed, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Cochran told ABC News that his daughter just started college.
“Now we have to try and figure out how we’re going to continue affording that while this is going on for who knows how long,” Cochran, who is also president of his union, the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3145.
With no end in sight for the shutdown, the Trump administration is contemplating firing some federal workers as Republican senators hope to persuade enough Democrats to help them break the stalemate by supporting the GOP’s government funding bill.
The Senate will not hold votes on Thursday. After failing to pass the stopgap government funding bills on Wednesday, the Senate adjourned for the Yom Kippur holiday. The next votes are scheduled for Friday.
“Food is high. The electric bills and the gas bills, all these things went up,” Willie Joe Price, a cafeteria worker at the Library of Congress, told ABC News, adding that she doesn’t know how she will pay her rent if the shutdown continues for a prolonged period of time.
“I’m already juggling paycheck-to-paycheck,” Price said.
President Donald Trump and the Republicans are blaming the Democrats for the shutdown, while the majority of Democrats said they cannot support the temporary bill as long the GOP declines to reverse cuts to Medicaid recipients and raise premiums for millions of people dependent on the Affordable Care Act for health insurance.
“It is not radical to say we want to prevent average American families from getting huge increases,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the Senate minority leader, said in a speech on the Senate floor this week.
Meanwhile, the White House has targeted projects important to Democrats, including freezing $18 billion in infrastructure funding for New York City, home of Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader.
The White House is also blocking $8 billion in energy projects slated for 16 states that voted Democratic in the last presidential election — including Washington, Oregon, Minnesota, New Jersey and Massachusetts.
Heather Campbell, whose husband serves in the military, told ABC News that millions of military families are caught in the middle of the standoff.
While Oct. 1 paychecks have already gone out to some 2 million troops, they may miss their next payday on Oct. 15 if lawmakers can’t reach a compromise to end the shutdown. Military personnel will get paid retroactively once the shutdown is over.
“When we’re talking about a government shutdown, this is a big stressor for our community in the military and even for my family because many of our families are one-income,” said Campbell, a mother of three.
Campbell, a registered dietician, said she lost her job earlier this year, a victim of federal job cuts.
“There are a lot of different reasons that military spouses are unemployed at a rate of 24%. So, when we’re talking about, ‘Hey, we might not get my husband’s paycheck,’ that is our household paycheck,” Campbell said.
She said that while she and her husband have a rental property, their tenants are in the same boat as her family and aren’t able to pay the rent.
“They are also affected by this,” Campbell said. “So, there are a lot of different things that really come into the day-to-day of how our family can function.”
Campbell said a lot of military families have less than $500 in savings and “don’t have the ability to build up a savings account.”
ABC News also spoke to more than a half dozen National Guard Troops currently deployed in Washington, D.C., who are required to continue working through the government shutdown without pay. They requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Many members of the National Guard serve part-time and rely on outside jobs for their main source of income.
Most of the Guard members told ABC News they are still getting paid through their full-time jobs in the private sector. But several National Guard members said they have not been getting paid by their full-time employers during their deployment in Washington, D.C.
One Guardsman told ABC News he expected they would likely miss their next paycheck due to the shutdown, but said he wasn’t personally concerned because his full-time job was still paying him.
The National Guard, which was deployed to Washington, D.C., in August, is expected to remain on active duty in the District through Nov. 30, two U.S. officials previously told ABC News.
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