At the beginning of the new year, the "shutdown" of the U.S. federal government has entered its 17th day due to the difficulty in reconciling the differences between the White House and Congress on the budget issue of the U.S.-Mexico border wall. In the cold weather, the atmosphere in the capital Washington is even more depressing.
For Pablo Lazado, a federal government contractor, the continued "shutdown" of the government means that he needs to find ways to save money, otherwise paying rent and other expenses will be a problem. What’s worse is that there are many government employees like him who have suffered the consequences of the government shutdown.
"It's not fair that politicians are playing games and putting me out of a job"
"Washington Post" columnist Joe Davidson published on January 7 "When civil servants suffer, Trump Government shutdown threatens The article "Friday Payday" stated that today's U.S. government leaders need to get out and about frequently. If he does, he may hear more than one group of people complaining about the deterioration of government services and the damage suffered by government employees, including the direct losses to about 800,000 people caused by the shutdown of some government departments in the United States. By hearing from rank-and-file government workers, U.S. government leaders may gain a clearer understanding of the difficulties they face and a truer sense of how they feel about being shut out and asked to work without pay. "This Friday's payday is in danger of disappearing".
The picture shows that on January 6, workers in Washington cleaned up garbage on the National Mall for free. Guangming Picture/Visual China
However, U.S. government leaders do not necessarily understand the living conditions of these more than 800,000 government employees. According to the US media Axios website, a person familiar with the matter told the website’s reporter Jonathan Swan that until recently, President Trump had been privately stating that he believed that the American people did not care about the government shutdown, and the government A shutdown would not hurt him personally either. "Washington Post" reporter Joe Davidson also wrote in his article that President Trump turned a deaf ear to the sad plight of government employees. At a press conference at the White House on January 4, President Trump even stated that government employees would encourage him to continue the shutdown because the border wall is more important than a fully functioning government.
Joe Davidson opined in the article that if President Trump talked to more government employees, he would hear the stories of people like Katherine Sheffron. "I'm a single mother of two children with disabilities, and like many Americans, I live paycheck to paycheck," said Katherine, a lawyer who works in a civil rights division of the Justice Department. "It's not complicated. If you don't have a paycheck, then I can't pay my mortgage and other bills, it's that simple."
Lisa Earle, a staff member at the Smithsonian Museum System, also said in a statement, "I am afraid of losing several weeks of income and medical benefits. The shutdown threatens to leave me homeless, and it’s not fair that politicians are playing games and leaving me unemployed.”
About a quarter of the federal government agencies in the United States have been at a standstill since the early morning of December 22, 2018, and it has entered its third week so far. This is the U.S. Department of Treasury taken in Washington, the capital of the United States, on January 1, 2019. Xinhua News Agency reported
According to a report on the " New York Times " website on January 4, during the government shutdown, government employees were the first to be harmed. Washington, the capital, is said to have received about 900 relief applications from government employees, while more than 350 federal employees in Colorado have submitted unemployment benefits applications.
The "shutdown" affects the food and housing problems of poor families.
According to media reports here, several senior US government officials said that the government did not initially expect such a long shutdown and did not realize it until this week. The potential impact is so wide. They admit that the government shutdown has indeed affected thousands of federal programs. The
Axios website published an article on January 7, "The Pain of Shutdown Spreads Widely," citing a report from the Washington Post that the Trump administration is working to mitigate the impact of the government shutdown on Americans, including those in need of housing. The federal government helps people.According to reports, in order to prevent thousands of tenants from being evicted, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development has sent letters to 1,500 landlords. Many of these tenants rely on Department of Housing and Urban Development programs to rent their homes. Most officials at the department were unaware that the program had expired on January 1 and was now unable to be renewed because of the government shutdown.
CNN recently opened a webpage titled "How the Government Shutdown Affects Americans", inviting the public to take stock of the troubles they have encountered due to the government shutdown. One woman wrote that she and her husband live on food stamps from the government, and now that the government is shut down and the staff responsible for the federal food stamp program has been reduced by 95%, they have not received their daily food stamps this month. There is basically no food at home.
It may be difficult for outsiders to imagine that in the United States, a superpower, many people live on food stamps issued by the government. A White House official told Axios.com on January 7 that they believe it is critical to put pressure on Democrats in the next 72 hours because the real impacts of the government shutdown are looming, with the biggest concern being food. Vouchers have been suspended. According to the "Washington Post" report, if the government shutdown continues until February, 38 million low-income people across the United States will face significant cuts in food stamps.
Food stamps require funding from Congress each year. As of now, Congress has not allocated funds for food stamps beyond January, and food stamp emergency reserve funds are not even enough to cover two-thirds of February costs. If the government shutdown continues into March, there will be no money available for the food stamp program. If Congress fails to allocate funds in a timely manner, it is no exaggeration to say that "some Americans will go hungry."
The government shutdown has made people feel that their vital interests are deeply affected. In addition to food stamps, it may be tax refunds. Because most federal employees responsible for processing tax refunds are on vacation at home, more than $140 billion in tax refund funds are at risk of being frozen or delayed, and taxpayers may not receive their tax refunds. " Wall Street Journal " reported that delayed tax refunds may hit low-income earners hard because they usually have to use tax refunds to pay off debt.
Newcomers can’t get their certificates and the park is in chaos
The U.S. government shutdown has affected many government service functions, including airport security. The U.S. Transportation Security Administration recently issued a warning that if federal employees still don't get paid this week, it could threaten airport security. The Transportation Security Administration said that due to the inability to receive wages, a significant increase in employees have taken leave recently, including security personnel responsible for scanning.
What is even more ridiculous is that the US government shutdown has also affected couples from receiving marriage certificates. The marriage registration office in Washington, the capital, has been closed due to a lack of federal funding, frustrating newlyweds who happily went to Washington to get their marriage certificates.
For those who come to the United States, especially the national parks, the government shutdown has made their travel experience terrible.
Unlike the previous Obama administration or the Clinton administration, the Trump administration still decided to keep America’s national parks open during the government “shutdown.” However, because national park staff are not at work and there is a lack of supervision in some highly dangerous national parks, there have been cases of tourists falling from observation decks and dying. A former national park official said in an interview with the media that in the absence of staff management, it would be very risky to go to the national park to watch animals or conduct outdoor hiking and other activities.
Due to a lack of staff management, there is now chaos in American national parks. The bathrooms were overloaded due to lack of cleaning, and even feces and water were flowing across them. Some tourists do not follow the prescribed paths and run around with their dogs in an environment where bears and many other wild animals are present; some tourists drive off the road and crush the desert vegetation; some tourists discard garbage bags along the way, leaving piles of garbage in the park. Long-term negative impacts on wildlife, including bears. Officials at the National Parks Conservation Association worry that fungi, bacteria and rocks on the surface of the soil will destroy the biological life that the park's plants need to survive.The official said the impact on vegetation in the desert system could take hundreds of years to repair.
(Guangming Daily, Washington, January 7, Guangming Daily reporter in Washington, Tang Xianying)
"Guangming Daily" (January 09, 2019, page 12)
