The budget war on Twitter vs. real life

During the last two weeks, Americans have witnessed a political battle between Democrats and the White House for the approval of this year’s budget that, as of today, has left no politician wounded but hundreds of thousands of public employees with no paycheck.

Many have focused on the war between parties and very little about those affected by the shutdown, which started just before Christmas. Those workers deemed “essential,” although unionized, have been working without pay, and others have been simply furloughed.

While more than half of Americans had blamed mainly President Donald Trump for the issue, the truth is that both sides are responsible for the controversy.

Everything started with the White House proposal to include $5.7 billion to fulfill Trump’s campaign promise to build the wall from Tijuana to the Texas. However, the opposition won’t agree to the project, which they contend would be both a violation to environmental law and a worthless financial burden to taxpayers.

Since the beginning, both sides have engaged in a battle on social media in order to gain ground in the court of public opinion. Democrats have blamed the president and the White House, and Republicans have done the same against their counterparts.

In the middle of this war, public workers, taxpayers and all those who use services provided by the U.S. government have been impacted.

But of special interest are our federal employees who have to work without pay until this mess is resolved. This includes Border Patrol agents, Customs agents and some others who live in our area.

As local residents, all these workers must purchase groceries to feed their families, pay mortgage or rent, buy gasoline for their personal vehicles, pay local and state taxes, as well as public utilities and many other things to live their daily lives.

Some likely have enough money set aside to weather this cash-flow drought, but there will also be some, perhaps many, who are going to have some trouble covering their bills. Their choices will come down to running up credit card debt, selling or pawning assets, obtaining a loan or filing for unemployment benefits.

According to the Democratic Party, almost 40,000 federal employees in California have been affected by the shutdown.

As said, some of those are workers at our ports of entry. They are affiliated with the National Treasury Employees Union, whose president, Tony Reardon, has already asked the administration to mitigate the effects of the shutdown by accelerating the delivery of back pay, providing documents to negotiate with creditors and preserving the leave earned.

“With comments from senior government officials and leaders indicating that the shutdown may continue for some time, many federal employees are gravely concerned about their finances now that they are either furloughed with no pay or on the job unable to rely on their next scheduled paycheck,” Reardon said.

A similar measure was taken during the previous shutdowns of 1995-96 and 2013.

And to make things worse, President Trump has announced a pay freeze for 2019 that the union considers insulting due to the years of no pay raises or below-market increases that have put federal workers behind private-sector wages and increased costs of living.

Fortunately, Democratic leaders met Wednesday with White House officials seeking a solution sans border wall. Here’s hoping those talks help bring about a prompt end to the shutdown and its impact on vulnerable communities like ours.