While Republicans and Democrats remain locked in a budget stalemate closed by the federal government, some workers issued in Limbo said they already feel stressed by how they will reach the end of the month.
The closure of the government entered its second day on Thursday without an imminent resolution, leaving some license workers such as Mark Cochran worried about how he and his family will take them without pay.
Cochran, who works for the National Parks Service in Newburg, Pennsylvania, is one of the approximately 750,000 federal workers scheduled to be suspended, according to the Congress Budget Office.
The United States Capitol in Washington, DC, September 30, 2025.
Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters
Cochran told Abc News that his daughter has just started the university.
“Now we have to try to discover how we are going to continue giving that, while this happens for who knows how long,” Cochran, who is also president of his union, the American Federation of Employees of the Local Government 3145.
Without an end to the closing, the Trump administration is contemplating to fire some federal workers, since the Republican senators hope to persuade enough Democrats to help them break the stagnation when supporting the Financing Law of the Government of the Republican Party.
The Senate will not have votes on Thursday. After not passing the Financing Law of the Stopgap government on Wednesday, the Senate was postponed for Yom Kippur holidays. The next votes are scheduled for Friday.
A sign outside the main door announces that the John F. Kennedy presidential museum is closed, the first day of a partial closure of the United States government, in Boston, Massachusetts, on October 1, 2025.
Brian Snyder/Reuters
“The food is high. Electrical invoices and gas invoices, all these things went up,” said Willie Joe Price, a cafeteria worker in the Congress Library, adding that he does not know how he will pay his rent if the closure continues for a prolonged period of time.
“I am already juggling with pay payment,” said Price.
President Donald Trump and the Republicans blame the Democrats for the closure, while most Democrats said they cannot support the temporary bill, since the Republican Party refuses the inverse cuts to the medicaid receptors and raised premiums for millions of people who depend on the affordable care law for health insurance.
“It is not radical to say that we want to prevent the average American families from obtaining great increases,” Senator Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., a leader of the Senate Minority, in a speech on the floor of the Senate this week, said.
The senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, talks to journalists at Capitol, on October 1, 2025, in Washington.
Mark Schiefelbein/AP
Meanwhile, the White House has directed important projects for Democrats, including freezing of $ 18 billion in infrastructure funds for New York City, Schumer’s home and Hakeem Jeffries representative, the Chamber’s minority leader.
The White House is also blocking $ 8 billion in energy projects scheduled for 16 states that voted democrats in the latest presidential elections, including Washington, Oregon, Minnesota, New Jersey and Massachusetts.
Heather Campbell, whose husband serves in the army, told ABC News that millions of military families are trapped in the midst of the confrontation.
Although the payment checks of October 1 have already left about 2 million troops, they can lose their next payment day on October 15 if legislators cannot reach a commitment to finish the closure. Military personnel will be paid retroactively once the closure ends.
An employee of the National Parks Service adjusts a closing signal while blocking a door that blocks vehicle access to the Shark Valley section of the Everglades National Park in Florida, on October 1, 2025.
Rebecca Blackwell/AP
“When we are talking about the closure of the government, this is a great stressful factor for our community in the army and even for my family because many of our families are of one income,” said Campbell, mother of three children.
Campbell, a registered dietitian, said he lost his job earlier this year, victim of federal job cuts.
“There are many different reasons why military spouses are unemployed at a 24%rate. Therefore, when we talk about ‘hey, we may not obtain my husband’s payment check’, that is our home payment check,” Campbell said.
She said that while she and her husband have a rental property, her tenants are in the same boat as her family and cannot pay the rent.
“They are also affected by this,” said Campbell. “So, there are many different things that really enter the day to day how our family can work.”
Campbell said many military families have less than $ 500 in savings and “do not have the ability to build a savings account.”
ABC News also spoke with more than half a dozen national guard troops currently deployed in Washington, DC, who must continue working through the closure of the government without pay. They requested anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
Many members of the National Guard serve part -time and trust external works for their main source of income.
Most guard members told ABC News that they are still paid through their full -time work in the private sector. But several members of the National Guard said that their full -time employers have not been paid during their deployment in Washington, DC
A Guardsman told ABC News that he hoped that he was probably lost his next payment check due to closing, but said he was personally worried because his full time work was still paying him.
The National Guard, which was deployed in Washington, DC, in August, is expected to remain active duty in the district until November 30, two US officials said to ABC News.
