According to Montgomery County Councilmember Kate Stewart, “A government shutdown will have a direct, detrimental and oversized impact on all of metropolitan Washington.”
In her role as Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) Board of Director, Stewart issued a statement. “This looming economic disruption will reach far into our communities, affecting individuals, families, and the small businesses that serve the sizable workforce.”
Nearly 400,000 area residents serve the federal government, she noted.
“A federal shutdown now jeopardizes the progress we have made” following the pandemic, she said.
Maryland’s federal legislators, all Democrats, blasted the possibility of a government shut down, directing blame squarely at a few “extreme” House Republicans.
Through news releases and posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, U.S. Senators Chris Van Hollen and Ben Cardin and U.S. Representatives Jamie Raskin (D-8th) and David Trone (D-6th) detailed what a government shutdown would mean to Marylanders.
“In a MAGA Shutdown, nearly 7 million mothers, infants & children could lose access to vital WIC nutrition assistance — including over 123,000 Marylanders. We’re talking about babies and their mothers going hungry,” Van Hollen posted.
“The last thing we need is a government shutdown, which would block the paychecks of the federal workforce that serves the traveling public and keeps our aviation system safe,” Cardin posted.
Trone cited data from the House Budget Committee Democrats, which details how the shutdown would hit Marylanders.
- 48,236 active duty and reserve personnel serving our nation’s armed forces in Maryland would be forced to go without the pay they earn during a shutdown.
- The Small Business Administration would stop processing small business loans, halting a program that provides $329,331,400 in funding to small businesses in Maryland every year.
- 22,460 people flying through Maryland airports every day would face potential delays and safety concerns due to staffing impacts on TSA agents and air traffic controllers.
- 123,101 people in Maryland would soon lose access to Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) benefits.
- 144,165 federal workers in Maryland would be furloughed or forced to work without pay, in addition to the many employees of businesses with government contracts who could be laid off, furloughed, or see their hours cut.
- Workers at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would be sidelined, risking interruptions and delays to 202 food safety, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and other inspections conducted in Maryland last year.
- The Department of Agriculture would be forced to stop processing housing loans, which provide $382,381,470 in funding to help 1,448 families in rural Maryland communities buy homes every year.
- The Department of Agriculture would be forced to stop processing farm loans which provide $21,424,000 in funding for farmers in Maryland every year.
- 670,867 Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) beneficiaries in Maryland would lose access to benefits in a prolonged shutdown.
- 5,802,513 people who visit national parks in Maryland every year may be turned away or unable to fully access parks, monuments, and museums.
- State governments would be forced to pay for federal services like the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, potentially risking benefits for the 43,336 TANF beneficiaries in Maryland.
Raskin, in a news conference with Montgomery County Marc Elrich earlier this week, said there are 56,000 federal workers who reside in his district. There also are “10s of thousands of retirees” who would see their federal checks stopped until the end of the shutdown.
While federal workers would recoup their salaries when the government reopens, contractors whose jobs were put on hold, would not, Raskin said.
Maryland House of Delegates Speaker Adrienne A. Jones noted in a post, “According to the Comptroller’s office, the 2019 Trump government shutdown kept 172,000 Marylanders from receiving a paycheck and cost our state and local governments $57.5 million in lost revenue.”
Depending on the length of the shutdown, restaurant owners who depend on federal employees as customers could go out of business, he said. Also losing their paychecks would be those who clean federal buildings or work in federal cafeterias or the Smithsonian museums.
Metro, which already has a budget deficit, could see fewer riders as the furloughed workers stay home.
Some of the federal offices in the county are the NIKE site in Gaithersburg; the Department of Energy in Germantown; the Federal Research Center in White Oak; the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda; the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission in Bethesda; The National Institute of Standard and Technology in Gaithersburg, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Silver Spring and the Intelligence Community Campus in Bethesda.
There are federal offices in Bethesda on Wisconsin Avenue and One White Flint North and in Silver Spring on East West Highway.
Maryland houses 11 military bases, including two in Montgomery County. The National Naval Medical Center and the Carderock division of the Naval Surface Warfare Center are both located in Bethesda.
In a MAGA Shutdown, more than 13K air traffic controllers & 50K TSA agents could be forced to work without pay — potentially causing costly travel delays nationwide.
Speaker McCarthy is playing politics with the livelihoods of the American people. It has to stop.
— Senator Chris Van Hollen (@ChrisVanHollen) September 27, 2023
