For 10 months, microbiologist Stephanie Rogers has watched layoffs and early retirements erode the workforce at her federal lab in Lakewood as it screens samples for foodborne diseases.
Now, in the second week of the latest federal government shutdown, she worries her job will be next if White House threats of mass layoffs or the withholding of back pay materialize. And then there’s the worry that the furlough itself, with no end in sight, will eat too deeply into her ability to provide for her family in the immediate future.
“It’s painful,” said Rogers, a 44-year-old mother of two who lives in Highlands Ranch and has worked at the lab for 16 years. “It’s painful that this was my dream job. I’ve given my career, and most of my working life, to this job. I’ve raised children, who are also part of this. They endure my pains, my frustrations and my stress.”
She added: “I want to do this job.”
Rogers is one of more than 54,000 federal civilian workers in Colorado, and many of them are among the estimated 750,000 employees nationwide who could be affected by the shutdown. She works for the Food and Drug Administration, but she noted that she was speaking only on behalf of herself and the local chapter of the National Treasury Employees Union, of which she is the president.
While Democratic and Republican officials attempt to find a resolution, the shutdown’s impact is immediately dire for federal workers and is being felt in local communities. Many other federal workers like Rogers have jobs based in Lakewood, which is home to the Denver Federal Center.
Lakewood Mayor Wendi Strom said on a recent media call that it’s hard to assess the scope of the shutdown’s effect on her city. But it will have ripple effects. Fewer people are eating lunch and shopping at nearby small businesses, Strom said, and businesses associated with federal services have less work.
The shutdown’s impacts veer into personal matters, too, for federal workers. Since being furloughed Oct. 1, Rogers said she hasn’t been sleeping, nor has one of her daughters. The other one has shut down emotionally, Rogers said, even as they try to maintain some normalcy with school, sports and concert recitals.
Rogers sped up medical appointments and prescription refills and took money out of her retirement account to help prepare for however long she might be out of work. Those are decisions that carry their own weight as she worries about downstream effects on future taxes as well as what would happen if she were to lose her health insurance.
There’s some financial backstop available. Furloughed federal workers can apply for the state’s unemployment insurance, though they’ll need to pay it back if and when the government pays them for the shutdown period. So far, 550 have made claims, according to state data, including Rogers.
But Rogers also worries about the day-to-day work at her lab that’s not being done.
She is part of a team tasked with combating and preventing outbreaks of foodborne illnesses, such as listeria, E. coli and salmonella. The team, which works 365 days a year, had already been stretched thin by prior workforce reductions.
Now Rogers worries that importers may see an opening to save money by cutting corners, or that simple random chance might produce an outbreak.
“What does that mean for the public — what does that mean for every pregnant woman who has to worry about the baby in their belly?” Rogers asked. “There might be other outbreaks that we might miss or not be able to respond to.”
No timeline for a resolution
How long the shutdown will last depends on decisions in Washington, D.C., where the Trump administration and members of Congress are locked in a partisan impasse.
Colorado’s congressional Democrats have accused the majority Republicans and President Donald Trump of refusing to negotiate on the impending expiration of federal tax credits for people on the individual health insurance marketplace.
It’s been a sticking point for Democrats writ large, who warn of a huge increase in premiums that’s coming for some people, such as those in the hard-to-insure mountain communities of Colorado.
The Colorado Department of Insurance warned in a September presentation that a family of four with an income of $96,450 could see its annual premium increase from about $5,800 per year to $9,400 per year. If the family reports making $128,600 or more, the premium could more than double, from about $11,000 per year to more than $27,000.
The budget impasse has been stuck in the U.S. Senate, where Democrats — who insist on fixing the tax credits problem — have stymied Republicans’ attempts to pass a bill extending federal funding.
Meanwhile, open enrollment notices are about to go out to people on the individual marketplace — and with it comes the potential for eye-watering sticker shock if the predicted increases materialize.
“If we roll over and say oh, it just doesn’t matter — penalizing millions of Americans and subjecting them to dramatically increased health care costs, along with all the other increases that they’re facing — that’s just not plausible, that’s not acceptable,” Sen. John Hickenlooper, a Colorado Democrat, said this week in a media call.
He didn’t have any predictions for how long the shutdown might last, calling it “one of the more frustrating experiences of my political life.”
U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen, a Democrat whose district includes the Federal Center in Lakewood, likewise didn’t have a prediction.
But the shutdown may drag on long enough that Pettersen has planned out a resource fair for federal employees this coming Tuesday, which would be nearly two weeks into the shutdown.
“In so many ways, this is just an unprecedented time, and we don’t know how this is going to end,” Pettersen said. “They’re using our federal employees and the services that we all depend on as political bargaining chips, and the president is trying to increase the pain and suffering here. It’s just unfathomable that we’re in this situation.”
Back pay ‘shouldn’t even be up for debate’
Trump has threatened to withhold back pay from furloughed federal workers and has said he’s going to use the shutdown to determine “which of the many Democrat Agencies” his administration will cut. At the same time, he’s also said he would follow the law, including one he signed in 2019 that requires back pay for furloughed federal workers once a shutdown ends.
Sen. Michael Bennet, a Democrat, said the law was clear and back pay “shouldn’t even be up for debate, it shouldn’t even be up for negotiation.”
“(Trump) has shown that he is willing to violate the law,” Bennet said. “I think that the attacks in this context on federal workers — and the suggestion that he’s going to lay them off, or he’s going to reduce their back pay — has only made his negotiating position worse.”
Colorado Republicans, meanwhile, have steadfastly blamed Democrats for “partisan games.”
“Every day that our Democrat Senators refuse to support the bipartisan, clean (continuing resolution) brings us closer to soldiers and federal workers in my district missing a paycheck,” U.S. Rep. Jeff Crank, a Colorado Springs Republican, wrote in a statement. “House Republicans did the responsible thing three weeks ago and passed a spending bill free of any partisan poison pills. It’s beyond time that Senators Hickenlooper and Bennet do the same.”
Rogers, the federal employee, said she appreciated the fight for health care affordability. But hundreds of thousands of families like hers are also getting caught in the middle.
“I understand there is a bigger purpose here,” Rogers said. “We must, No. 1, as public servants, represent what is best for America as a whole. I will fight for our country, and I want to make sure it’s what’s best for our country. It’s not fun for my family or myself, but we are the United States.
“We should work together. While there are different interests, it’s important for us to work together for what’s best for all of us.”
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