As shutdown ripples through Georgia, voters consider who to blame

ATLANTA — The federal government is closed for a third day. With national park visitor centers locked and hundreds of thousands of federal employees furloughed, Republicans and Democrats say voters should hold the other side responsible for the fallout.

But in Georgia, some are focused less on who’s to blame than how long the shutdown will last.

The last shutdown dragged on for 35 days from Dec. 2018 to Jan. 2019. Among the hardest hit were Transportation Security Administration employees at Atlanta’s humungous airport who had to keep working without pay.

“We did mass distributions of food and there were hundreds of cars in line of people who needed help,” said Atlanta Community Food Bank president Kyle Waide.

He said it is not clear yet if his organization will be seeing a small uptick in need or something more catastrophic if the shutdown continues for weeks.

Waide said the food bank will do what it can to help families. But if funding runs dry for federal food aid programs such as Women Infants and Children, or WIC, the nonprofit cannot meet the full need for some necessities like baby formula.

“Nonetheless, there will be more demand the food banks will have to respond to on top of that extraordinary level of need that they’re already facing,” he said.

At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which employs thousands of people at its Atlanta campus, the shutdown also comes at an already taxing time.

The Trump Administration has already slashed CDC jobs and programs. This summer, a shooter who law enforcement says harbored conspiracies about vaccines, fired hundreds of rounds at CDC buildings.

Now thousands more employees are furloughed and President Trump has threatened mass layoffs during the shutdown.

“It feels like there’s malice, versus what it was like back in 2018, 2019,” said Yolanda Jacobs, president of the union chapter that represents several thousand CDC employees.

“Now we feel like whatever is happening is meant to intentionally clear out and cull the herd, so to speak.”

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Georgia farmers could also face delays in block grant funding and commodity data they rely on.

“Very few things in this world have to be done on time,” said Ben Parker, the national affairs coordinator at the Georgia Farm Bureau. “Planting and harvesting are two of them.”

And Parker said the standstill in Congress is also distracting lawmakers from efforts to pass a Farm Bill.

“At the end of the day, I can only speak for agriculture,” Parker said. “It’s better for us if we can move past a shutdown because shutdowns don’t help farmers.”

At the 7,000-acre Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area, Brittany Jones, who directs the nonprofit Chattahoochee National Park Conservancy, is also worried about potential lasting consequences of a lengthy shutdown.

“I had C-SPAN on and it was a long sleepless night,” Jones said on the morning after the funding lapsed. She was waiting to see if she would need to cancel several fourth grade field trips to the park scheduled for this week.

“We’re gonna have to unfortunately disappoint all those kids that were excited to come to their national park,” Jones said. “That was a hard one this morning.”

Only five park service employees will remain on duty to cover the sprawling park across nine sites. Jones said she’s proud the conservancy can step up during a moment of need.

“But we also don’t want to set a precedent for stepping in too deep,” she said. “And when the government comes back online, then there’s an assumption that we can take on more roles, when the reality is that our mission is to enhance the park, not run the park.”

Jones is worried that shutdown could permanently reshape that relationship.

Who is responsible for the government shutdown?

Eighty three year-old Mary Keesee comes to this park often.

“On a warm day, you’ll see the cormorants in the trees with their wings out, and I think that will be so great to see,” she said. “That’s on my bucket list for the fall.”

Keesee said she is not sure who is responsible for the shutdown.

“I just heard something from one of the walkers that the Democrats want to give free health insurance, but I wasn’t sure to who,” she said.

Keesee is referring to false claims Republicans have made about Democrats wanting to provide subsidies to undocumented immigrants.

Democrats are holding out for a deal to extend subsidies for health insurance plans offered under the Affordable Care Act that are set to expire soon. Without the subsidies, many policyholders could see their premiums increase significantly – and some may no longer be able to afford the coverage.

Republicans also argue the subsidies, which were created during the pandemic, are too expensive. A few want to work with Democrats to preserve them.

Lauren Colbert, executive director of the advocacy group Georgians for a Healthy Future, said enrollment on the insurance policy marketplace created through the ACA has tripled in Georgia since the subsidies were passed in 2020.

At a trailhead, Stephen and Amantha Moore were unloading a picnic cooler from their rental car. They had just arrived in Georgia from Massachusetts.

“My retirement goal is to visit every park managed by the Park Service, so this is day two of a trip that appears like it’s not going to go as planned,” Moore said.

As they unfurled a big road map and flipped through a detailed itinerary honed over months, they explained how they thought about the shutdown.

“I respect the Democrats for taking a stand, finally,” Amantha Moore said.

Stephen Moore said Democrats should hold the line, but for how long – he is not sure.

“One of our sons worked for the National Park Service during that long period when the government shut down and there were people in dire straits,” Amantha Moore said.

But she said she struggles to square the tradeoff between fighting for the health subsidies and a shutdown that is forcing many federal workers to go without pay.

How the shutdown could shape the midterms

This purple stretch of Atlanta suburbs will be a key battleground in next year’s midterms, when Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff is up for reelection. He voted against the Republican stop-gap bill.

J.D. Rhine has supported candidates from both parties but is not able to point a finger for the shutdown.

“I try to listen to media that represents the Republicans and Democrats and weigh what I hear from both of those, and I can’t come to any conclusion,” Rhine said.

But finishing lunch on the main street in nearby Roswell, Reg Hunter does not hesitate to blame Democrats for the shutdown.

“Now Ossoff himself, I’ve heard him talk and he seems like a fairly reasonable guy,” he said.

Hunter’s lunch companion, Thomas Nelson, said he’s not sure if the shutdown will affect his vote.

“Maybe depending on how people act, and how it gets resolved, how long it lasts,” Nelson said. “I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about it. I think more about my kids and grandkids.”

Though for many people that could change the longer the shut down wears on.