Tens of thousands of Marylanders have been thrown out of work by the federal government shutdown and they say it makes them feel like a punching bag.
Aimee Harmon-Darrow, a financial analyst in the Baltimore office of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, has seen her pay frozen. She was furloughed several times over the summer because of the budget cutting known as sequestration, and now this.
She says she could plan for the furloughs “because we knew what days they were going to be, so we knew what pay checks they were going to hit.” But now, it’s “really hard to make any type of plan except to try not to spend anything other than what is absolutely necessary,” she says. “I don’t know how long I’ll be in a non-pay status.”
The whole thing is really depressing, as well as demoralizing, she says. “It’s been several years of feeling kind of under attack for working for my government. As if it was a bad choice I made.”
And she’s not the only one. Tim Rhodes, who lives in Hamilton and works for the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, says its “pretty common” for federal workers to “feel kind of beat up.”
What with budget cuts, sequestration, furloughs and now a shutdown that has sent them home until further notice, it’s enough to make you look for work elsewhere, even among lifelong government employees, he says. But he’s not going anywhere. “There’s a reason I work for NIH,” he says. “I love the mission. I love what they do. I love being able to be a part of something that is inherent to just being a human being."
Harmon-Darrow, who has worked at HUD for 12 years, says much the same thing about government service. “We’re doing that kind of work because those are things that are really important to us,” she says. “And we’re not making tons of money or anything, but we just believe in the mission and we feel like we’re under attack. It’s just been like a punching bag year after year.”
And as if the psychic trauma weren’t bad enough, there’s the damage to the pocketbook. Harmon-Darrow says her family can’t afford the loss of her paycheck for very long. And she knows of other families where both husband and wife work for the federal government. “They have no income coming in at all and it does feel really scary,” she says. “And I’m not exactly sure how to plan for it, you know?”
Rhodes says his wife works, too so his family will be okay financially, for the short term, at least. But, then there’s that baby that’s going to be here in early November. And then things will get really scary.
Meanwhile, a bi-partisan group of lawmakers has introduced bills in both houses of Congress to restore federal workers’ back pay when the shutdown ends. Maryland Senator Ben Cardin, one of the sponsors, told Federal News Radio Wednesday that federal workers have been asked to do a lot under very difficult circumstances and they deserve better.
“Sequestration affected many with furloughs,” he said. “We saw pay freezes that are now in the third year. We have fewer federal workers to do more work. The staffers’ health insurance has been under attack, wrongly so. They’re employers should contribute to their health benefits, just like any other employer. So, they’ve been really taking it.”
The shutdown heads toward its third day Thursday and federal employees will have time to catch up on long neglected yard work, money or no money.