The first wave of missed pay cheques is likely to hurt the underlying economy in many communities. And the longer other services remain shut off, the more the shutdown\u2019s effects will spread.<\/p>\n
Consumers are already facing mounting economic uncertainty. The last Government shutdown \u2013 a 34-day closure during Trump\u2019s first term, the longest closure in US history \u2013 shaved US$11 billion off the country\u2019s economic output, according to the Congressional Budget Office.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen those pay cheques start to dry up, and military is a big one, that\u2019s when purchases, child care, buying basic things like groceries \u2013 that\u2019s when it starts to impact people beyond the Government,\u201d said G William Hoagland, senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank. \u201cIt\u2019s a slow burn, but it gets worse as it goes on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Across the country, food banks are stocking up on provisions and community service organisations are telling at-risk clients to warn their lenders of the potential for missed payments, leaders of the groups told The Washington Post. Small business owners are keeping a close eye on their foot traffic. Federal workers are preparing their families for some financial belt-tightening.<\/p>\n
\u201cFamilies around the country are already seeing the impacts, and it\u2019s about to get a whole lot worse,\u201d Senate Majority Leader John Thune said. \u201cThe American people are going to feel a lot more pain and miss a lot more pay cheques in the near future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Across the nation, the shutdown is beginning to turn up the pain for food banks reliant on federal funds.<\/p>\n
In Philadelphia, serving the hungry has gotten more difficult for one of the region\u2019s largest food banks, said George Matysik, the executive director of Share Food Programme.<\/p>\n
Before the shutdown, demand for Share\u2019s services had already gone up by 120%, Matysik said, as the nonprofit saw US$8.5 million worth of federal resources vanish under the Trump administration\u2019s cuts to federal spending.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have never seen our warehouse as empty as it has been in the last three months,\u201d Matysik said. \u201cAnd on top of all this, we\u2019re now layering a shutdown.\u201d<\/p>\n
The organisation runs a delivery programme for seniors, dropping off 30-pound boxes of food for 7000 clients each month, Matysik said. Share has enough surplus stock to continue deliveries for another month, he said, but is looking into how to continue the programme in case federal help remains shut off.<\/p>\n
In Colorado, service members and veterans have been flooding the phones of Homefront Military Network, a nonprofit that helps military families in financial and community support, said Kate Hatten, the group\u2019s executive director.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of the calls we\u2019ve been getting over the past few days have been concern in anticipation of not getting a pay cheque on the 15th,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Most callers are worried about food insecurity, she said, but also about paying utility bills or making their mortgage and car payments.<\/p>\n
\u201cMissing a pay cheque or having one catastrophic expense is a problem for a lot of people across the nation, regardless of whether they\u2019re actively serving in the military,\u201d Hatten said. \u201cAnd I think that the challenge now in general is that the cost of living outpaces pay raises and housing allowances and benefits cheques and all those sorts of things.\u201d<\/p>\n
At several federal agencies, meanwhile, some services have been put on ice for the duration of the shutdown.<\/p>\n
Early on, Social Security Administration staff were given a list of activities that must stop, according to emails reviewed by The Post and several employees who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. Among the items on pause: benefit verification letters, which Social Security gives people so they can finalise their eligibility for state benefits like food stamps; subsidised housing and old age pensions; and earning corrections, which are issued when someone reports missing income.<\/p>\n
Also halted are any interactions with \u201cthird parties,\u201d including some attorneys and disability advocacy groups.<\/p>\n
All of those services are essential for people who rely on them.<\/p>\n
\u201cCallers are already expressing frustration about the limits of our work, specifically when they\u2019re asking us to complete something that we\u2019ve discontinued due to the lapse in funding,\u201d the employee said.<\/p>\n
Jonathan Stewart, an air traffic control supervisor who handled flights in and around Newark Liberty International Airport, said the system was showing signs of cracking just a few days into the shutdown.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you further stress out an already stressed-out career field, controllers are going to be in no way fit to control airplanes,\u201d said Stewart, who is out on trauma leave after technology outages at his facility in the spring left controllers unable to communicate with aircraft. \u201cIt\u2019s as simple as a field already stressed to the max. What is happening is pretty clearly predictable for anyone with any knowledge of it at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Controllers\u2019 last paycheck will come Tuesday, deepening the uncertainty they face as the shutdown drags on and threatening to make deepen flight delays.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe closer it gets to end of the pay period, the more distracted people are getting,\u201d said a controller at a major West Coast facility, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to talk about his work. \u201cSure, no one is not trying to, but we are all definitely distracted. It\u2019s the topic of conversation while we are working. And then distraction itself is a safety risk.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sign up to Herald Premium Editor\u2019s Picks<\/a>, delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Editor-in-Chief Murray Kirkness picks the week\u2019s best features, interviews and investigations. Sign up for Herald Premium here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first wave of missed pay cheques is likely to hurt the underlying economy in many communities. And…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1443,59327,27245,54058,26215,138,59326,28647,1887,12474,219,14051,71,266,3594,185,14771,111,139,69,6379,2850,3109,59328,1321,7538,57437,223,1961,61,3040,686,1533,102,4478],"class_list":["post-75906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-about","tag-absence","tag-beyond","tag-billions","tag-broader","tag-business","tag-cheques","tag-collide","tag-countrys","tag-dollars","tag-economy","tag-federal","tag-from","tag-government","tag-hit","tag-is","tag-missed","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-ongoing","tag-pain","tag-public","tag-reverberate","tag-services","tag-shutdown","tag-sting","tag-the","tag-this","tag-to","tag-us","tag-week","tag-will","tag-with","tag-workers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}