Workers anxious as cuts set to take effect

KITTERY, Maine (AP) — They don't care which side caused Washington's latest crisis.

Five hundred miles from Capitol Hill, the men and women of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard are worrying about paying rent, searching for new jobs and caring for sick loved ones.

Almost the entire work force, a community of more than 5,000 along the Maine and New Hampshire seacoast, is preparing to lose the equivalent of a month's pay because of Congress' inability to resolve another budget stalemate.

Orsom "Butch" Huntley, 63, a shipyard employee for three decades, is already living paycheck to paycheck while caring for his terminally ill wife.

"Congress doesn't look at the individual. They just look at the bottom line. And it just really makes it tough to think we're just a number to them," Huntley, a computer engineer, said this week in a restaurant outside the shipyard gate. "It's going to be totally devastating."