Campaign Action
What do you know! It turns out that the government does important work that millions of people rely on, and when big parts of the government are shut down, it hurts people. Some of the biggest damage will come if food stamp funding runs out, which could happen as soon as February, leaving more than 38 million people without enough to eat. But the damage is already happening across the government—and that means it’s affecting the people and businesses the government serves:
- While the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is still funded, for the moment, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) is not, forcing states to fill the gap for as long as they can.
- Many federal workers will be missing a paycheck this week. They “owe a combined $249 million in monthly mortgage payments, according to the online real estate firm Zillow.” They include the Secret Service agents protecting 42 members of Team Trump.
- Companies looking for exemptions from Donald Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs will have to wait until the Commerce Department reopens.
- Farmers looking for subsidies to help them get through Trump’s trade war will likewise have to wait because the USDA’s Farm Service Agency isn’t processing those.
- Nearly 40,000 mortgage applications are being held up.
- Craft brewers can’t put out new beers because the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives isn’t open to approve the labels.
- The Securities and Exchange Commission isn’t able to investigate shady financial dealings, which might make some companies happy—except the SEC also isn’t able to review merger and acquisition filings or applications for stock offerings.
It’s only going to get worse.
More programs will run out of the funding reserves they’ve been using to scrape by. More essential workers will call out sick, and more will find other jobs and not be available to return to work when the government reopens. The backlogs will get bigger as more brewers and farmers and mortgage applicants join the throngs waiting for their applications or beer labels to be considered. Mothers and their babies, and then the tens of millions of people on food stamps, will go hungry.