Trump unrepentant as federal workers unpaid over holidays
Print Edition
THE lights were not twinkling. The toy trains were not whirring. Even the nearby bathrooms were locked.
The national Christmas tree, symbol of a country’s seasonal cheer, instead stood as an icon of a US government in paralysis, as a partial shutdown stretched into the holiday.
An array of federal services are frozen, some 800,000 public servants either idle or about to be and the disruption to the broader public bound to grow when the quiet spell ends later this week.
Already facilities at many national parks were shut, if the parks were accessible at all, and thousands of federal buildings were to remain closed when the work week resumed unless US President Donald Trump and members of Congress quickly break through a budget impasse that the White House said could drag on into 2019.
A labor organization representing US Treasury employees said federal workers around the country were cutting back on spending and changing holiday plans with family.
“Just in case anyone still thinks a partial shutdown over a holiday weekend is harmless, think again,” Tony Reardon of the National Treasury Employees Union said. “Your friends and neighbors around the country who work for the federal government are already showing signs of financial stress.”
In the mountain town of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, Taylor Futch said the shutdown has put extra stress on her family, whose sole income comes from her husband, a wildlife biologist who works with black bears for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. With two young daughters, the couple is facing an US$800 land payment due at the beginning of January as well as a mortgage, car payment and the usual bills.
“We’re trying to gather up a couple things just in case I need to start selling stuff on Facebook or eBay,” she said. “If his paycheck doesn’t get here on Friday, we may not have enough for the mortgage.”
Federal workers at the agencies affected by the gap in appropriations go unpaid as long as the shutdown lasts. They were expected to get retroactive pay once the impasse was broken.
The immediate impact was blunted by the timing of the shutdown — spanning a weekend and now Christmas Eve and Christmas, both holidays. But there is little chance to solve anything before tomorrow at the earliest, when the House and Senate return to work.
Trump stayed at the White House, canceling plans to spend the holidays in Florida, and kept up a torrent of tweets about his critics and his insistence on money for a border wall, the issue at the heart of the budget dispute.
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