‘Our Country Is Being Run by Children’: Shutdown’s End Brings Relief and Frustration

Some cried with relief. Their 35-day nightmare of missing bill payments, working without paychecks, asking strangers for money and visiting food pantries was finally ending.

But many of the federal workers who have been furloughed or working for free since December were leery of the three-week deal reached on Friday to reopen the government. New worries gnawed: How long before they got paid? Would federal contractors see even a dime of back pay?

And most of all, after the longest shutdown in American history, would they and 800,000 other federal workers be back in the same mess in three weeks if President Trump and Democrats do not reach an accord on whether to fund his proposed border wall?

“This was all for nothing, basically,” said Angela Kelley, 51, a furloughed worker for the Bureau of Land Management in Milwaukee who picked up shifts as an Uber driver to earn money to buy gas and groceries as the shutdown dragged on.

On Friday, Mr. Trump praised federal workers as “fantastic people” and “incredible patriots” and acknowledged the toll they had suffered. But several federal employees said they still felt angry after being treated like pawns, they said, in a five-week-long Washington standoff. They said the shutdown had left deep scars on their families and finances and undermined their faith in elected leaders, and in the careers they had chosen.

The New York Times talked with more than a dozen federal workers and contractors — from wildland firefighters to Coast Guard families to museum security guards — about how they had survived the shutdown, and the uncertainty they now face.

‘They Chose to Break Faith’

John Hare, 42, is one of thousands of Coast Guard employees and retirees worried that they may find themselves in the same precarious position a few weeks from now.

Because the Coast Guard is the only branch of the military that is part of the Department of Homeland Security, it was affected by the shutdown. About 55,000 active-duty, reserve and civilian employees had already missed two paychecks, while another 50,000 military retirees would have gone without a pension payment for the first time on Feb. 1.

After 22 years of service, Mr. Hare was forced to retire from the Coast Guard last August after learning he had a rare form of cancer that spread from his appendix. His wife had to stop working to care for him, and missing Mr. Hare’s pension check of $2,698 would have put a significant dent into the family budget.

“The faith in our leadership to be able to negotiate with each other has been broken,” Mr. Hare, of Rolesville, N.C., said on Friday. “And they chose to break faith with the U.S. military.”

“I certainly question the hostage-taking of government employees’ paychecks,” he said. “And nobody that was in power who had the power to stop this, none of them were injured” by the shutdown.

“It is less a sense of relief because nothing has been solved.”

‘This Has Damaged My Family’

Yvette Hicks, 40, a security guard at the Smithsonian museums, said she woke up on Friday and prayed, once again, for the shutdown to end. As a single mother, she said the shutdown had taken a toll on her family’s budget and her own mental health.

When she learned on Friday she might be returning to work, Ms. Hicks said she had been crying. Her 14-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son were due home from school soon, and she was trying to put up a brave face for them. She said her son, Kaden, had nevertheless told his teachers that his mother was now sad all the time.

Ms. Hicks said her family had once been homeless, and that she believed her job at the Smithsonian was a path to stability. She even saved up enough to book a spring-break vacation for her children to an indoor water park in Virginia. But as the bills piled up and her paychecks stopped, she said she canceled the trip and lost the $350 deposit she had paid for a room.

“It’s just a hurting thing,” she said. “This has damaged my family.”

‘Our Country Is Being Run by Children’

Anthony Powers, 35, had begun thinking about leaving his 15-year career as part of an elite team of wildland firefighters with the United States Forest Service in Southern California. He was that frustrated with his nation’s leaders.

“Our country is being run by children,” he said.

On Friday, he was relieved but not elated, noting that everything could shut down again soon.

Mr. Powers and his colleagues typically spend this time of year clearing away brush to help lessen fire danger in the coming year. None of that has been happening for the last month or so, and his team needs more than three weeks to get the job done. He also has a national conference set for the end of February, and the short-term opening leaves him in limbo. Is it going to happen? Should he plan for it? Not plan for it?

“There’s been so much planning for this to go into the long-term,” he said. “Now it’s like, where do you reset?”

‘So Out of Touch With the American People’

Nic Trujillo, 34, a single father and collections representative for the Internal Revenue Service in Ogden, Utah, said the shutdown had done financial and emotional damage.

He had not paid rent in January because he needed to pay other expenses. On Friday, he and his 6-year-old son were just one week away from being evicted and having to move in with extended family.

Staying at home had also left him depressed. Before he was ordered to return to work without pay on Jan. 18, his natural night-owl tendencies had taken over. He would stay up late, get up to get his son off to school, then sleep for much of the day.

“I haven’t really done anything. I haven’t really gone anywhere,” he said, explaining that he didn’t want to waste gas. “It’s just been a very depressive time.”

He said he blamed both the president and Congress for the shutdown, saying that none of them knew what it was like to live paycheck to paycheck.

“They are so out of touch with the American people that it’s unacceptable.”

‘I’m Staying in Shutdown Mode’

Kim Howell, 34, whose husband is in the Coast Guard in Boston and has been working 12-hour night shifts throughout the shutdown, said she didn’t feel much relief on Friday. She said she didn’t expect that her husband would get any back pay for a week or two. And then there was the possibility that the government would shut down again in three weeks.

Ms. Howell said her family had been fortunate because she works for a tech startup. But the loss of her husband’s income strained them. They had to put off rent payments, utility bills, and cellphone, cable and internet bills.

She had visited a food pantry that had been set up in Boston for Coast Guard families. She worried about the impact on her three children, who are 9, 13 and 14. Her oldest child told her he felt helpless and anxious watching his parents try to navigate the crisis. She did not blame any particular party, but said she felt betrayed. And she worried the dysfunction was far from over.

“I’m staying in shutdown mode,” she said. “That’s the only responsible thing to do right now.”