Workers relieved, worried as partial shutdown ends

Associated Press

Federal workers who have gone a month without getting paid during the longest government shutdown in U.S. history expressed relief Friday that a deal had been reached to end the impasse, but are worried they’ll be in the same spot in a few weeks.

Ivan Tauler and his wife spent an exhausting three weeks calling, researching and haggling to get relief from government agencies, schools, banks and utility companies to scrape by during the shutdown that caused him to be furloughed from his cartographer job at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in West Virginia.

For Tauler, the end of the shutdown was far from a cause for celebration. The deal announced Friday by President Donald Trump only reopens the government for three weeks while negotiations continue over the president’s demands for money to build his long-promised border wall.

“We won’t be spending money like we normally would,” said Melinda Tauler. “We will be more cautious about our finances than normal until we know that the government is not going to be closing every couple of weeks.”

Tauler was one of about 800,000 furloughed federal workers thrust into weeks of uncertainty and financial hardship — leading many to take out loans, apply for unemployment, do temporary jobs and launch online campaigns asking for donations.

The end of the 35-day impasse came on what would have been the second payday with no checks for federal workers. The deal includes back pay federal workers who have gone without paychecks, with Trump vowing that they will get paid very soon.

Eileen Hartigan, who works as a nurse at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, felt a deep sense of relief financially. But it was mixed with the feeling of being used by politicians.

The 52-year-old Virginia woman is a Trump supporter who blamed the shutdown on all sides, though she doesn’t understand how her “being out of work made any difference on the immigration issue.”