ST. LOUIS — Andrea Caviedes and her friend, Ximena Gumpel, live in the St. Louis suburbs, have two children and helped plan a Christmas party together, but when it comes to the partial federal shutdown, now finishing its third week, they might as well live in different countries. Ms. Caviedes, 42, a furloughed bilingual loan processor in the Agriculture Department’s rural development program, spent the week visiting her church’s food pantry, applying for unemployment insurance and job hunting at Walmart and Walgreens. “It has been terrible,” said Ms. Caviedes, a single mother whose 10-year-old son is partially blind and autistic. She feels for her friend, but “it hasn’t affected me at all,” she said. “You kind of push it aside and figure it will pass, that it’s just political bickering.”

Source: New York Times January 11, 2019 17:46 UTC