By bizn_fun 
“The last shutdown was brutal”, said one federal worker, who highlighted that the impasse in 2018-19 lasted more than a month.
He added: “It forced me to withdraw money from my retirement plan just to cover my bills. Now, they’ve made it more difficult to withdraw from our retirement accounts, so if this goes as long as the last shutdown, I don’t know how I’m going to pay my bills.”
The same worker said: “I voted for Trump, but I did not vote for his abuses against us.”
Another worker, for the Department of Homeland Security, based in New Jersey, took a slightly different view: “Despite working without timely pay, I support the shutdown.”
He explained: “The president’s circumvention of Congress’ power of the purse has been left unchecked by the Supreme Court. Checks and balances must be maintained.”
Meanwhile, a worker for Army Corps of Engineers said she was “rather conflicted” and did not mind a break from the “gruelling end of fiscal year – a year full of constantly shifting guidance and the ever-present threat” of a mass firing.
She said she would “support a shutdown if anything productive comes of it, but I’m unsure anything will”.
Randall from Kansas City, who works with the Aviation Weather Center, said: “I don’t like my pay being held hostage while the government fights over separate issues.”
He said he believed that keeping the National Weather Service funded was something both parties typically agreed, so asked why he was “facing sudden loss of funds because Congress is fighting over healthcare or whatever”. He emphasised that these were his personal views, and not those of his agency.
An anonymous US Air Force employee told us that if the situation was not resolved, he would have nothing to live on. He expressed his dilemma as follows: “I must still show up to work but won’t get paid, because if I don’t it’s considered AWOL”.
A worker at the Department of the Treasury had a message to the party holding out against the spending plans of Trump’s Republican party.
“I strongly implore Democrats to stand firm and not cave to the continued assault on healthcare and affordability for everyday Americans,” she said. She added that no amount of threats to her job would cause her to waver in her views.