Michael Pasqua doesn’t know what dollar figure will appear on his bi-weekly paycheck Friday.
A life scientist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Pasqua is still working despite the federal government shutdown that began Oct. 1 after lawmakers failed to pass a funding bill.
His department within the EPA Region 5, which covers Illinois and five other Midwest states, was fortunate to have carryover funds from the previous budget to continue operating. But Pasqua said he’s unsure if the carryover funding “means we’re going to get paid.”
“No one’s really kind of said that,” said Pasqua, 37, who lives in Edgewater and fills the roles of Region 5 data coordinator and Drinking Water Program manager for Wisconsin.
It’s also unclear how long the extra funding will last, he said.
One delayed paycheck may not break the bank, “but as each week goes on, we’re going to be, you know, each week is going to be harder and harder,” Pasqua said.
The biggest impact of the shutdown so far has been the constant rumors about potential furloughs and layoffs, uncertainty about who is still working, fragmented coordination between agencies and the inability to perform certain tasks with some workers gone, according to three workers from different agencies who spoke with the Sun-Times.
“It’s not really tangible effects, I would say. It’s more of, like, I’m just exhausted, personally, mentally, emotionally exhausted of this,” Pasqua said, adding that the EPA has been threatened severely since January, for example, with reductions in force plans, and it has lost a few thousand workers across the country through buyouts and firings.
A federal employee in an inspector general’s office in the Chicago area is in a similar position. He’s still working with leftover funding, but the shutdown is “draining resources” that would be used elsewhere.
They’re unable to obtain specific data to perform audits and investigations, and even some information technology and human resources needs are becoming difficult to come by.
The inspector general worker, who asked not to be identified out of fear of retaliation, said the majority of federal workers are “in it for the right reasons,” especially those in the inspector general’s office who work to find fraud, waste and abuse, which has been a stated priority of President Donald Trump’s administration.
“To see the continued demonization of federal employees as lazy and sort of the deep state enacting their own will, it’s frustrating to see that continue because what’s actually being shut down right now are so many things that are in line with not just what the American people want in their government, but even what this very administration wants to achieve,” he said. “So, it’s frustrating and it just leaves you asking, ‘Who is this for?’”
As the shutdown entered its second week Wednesday, a few dozen federal workers and some Democratic congressional members rallied at Federal Plaza downtown to call for Republicans, who hold small majorities in both houses of Congress, to pass a funding measure that includes an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies that expire at the end of the year.
“This affects real people’s livelihoods,” U.S. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García said. “People who live paycheck to paycheck. Whether they work in social security, whether they work at TSA or the airport, air traffic controllers or whether they’re food inspectors, EPA workers. All of them are important.”
Extension of already dwindling operations
The shutdown has only exacerbated the eroding functions at some agencies as a result of Trump’s effort to downsize the federal government, some workers said.
Shortly after taking office in January, Trump implemented a “Fork in the Road” voluntary buyout program. About 150,000 federal workers took the buyouts, while thousands more have left for other reasons, which has expanded some agencies’ daily workloads.
“The day-to-day operations are getting so bogged down,” the inspector general employee said. “It just feels a little bit like the wheels are falling off the machine in real time. First with the fork, now with the shutdown, it’s increasingly difficult to know who to reach out to, who’s still going to be there.”
Colin Smalley, a geologist in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ permitting department and union representative, said his department had already been feeling the effects of the downsizing effort. They’ve had credit cards turned off and various services, like training websites, defunded or also cut off.
And recently, grievances taken up by the union he represents, Local 777 of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, are no longer going to the Federal Labor Relations Authority in Chicago.
The FLRA’s Chicago office permanently closed and now, grievances are piled up along with the FLRA’s Denver office.
Smalley’s day-to-day work hasn’t stopped, though.
He and his coworkers will continue working to improve ecosystems, operate locks and dams, ensure safe waterway navigation, and design structures to help mitigate natural disasters, among many other projects — even when the money runs out.
“What my coworkers want to do is serve the public. We took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, but also the communities that we live in,” said Smalley, 37, from Woodlawn.
“Most of us are, in very real ways, serving our own communities as well,” he said. “So, when our work suffers, our communities are also deprived of those benefits.”