On the recordJanuary 10, 2019
I am here today to describe the enduring financial challenges that families are experiencing because of the President's government shutdown. I know how terrifying it is when your livelihood is suddenly taken away. I grew up during the 1980s farm crisis and watched as my neighborhood bank closed. Everyone in my town felt a real sense of panic and of loss. Farmers were being foreclosed on and losing farms that had been in their family for generations. There were suicides and the kind of social pain and personal pain that comes with economic hardship. While the town eventually recovered, the people and the community were changed forever. I understand how devastating a financial crisis can be, and I understand how one missed paycheck can spiral. I know this from my own childhood during the farm crisis and from the nearly two decades I have spent studying families on the brink of bankruptcy. Federal workers are now questioning whether working for the Federal Government is a stable paycheck. They are wondering if their family, if their kids can count on this administration. Families are wondering how long they can afford to wait for the shutdown to end, and they are having hard discussions at the dinner table about whether to leave the Federal workforce in search for a new job. Tomorrow, 800,000 Federal workers and their families will miss paychecks, plunging employees into uncertainty. About 42,000 of those Federal workers are in my home State of California.…
