Nearly every night, my husband and I load our four kids into our gray Volkswagen Tiguan. With my husband in the driver’s seat, I open the DoorDash app and we hit the road. We’ll drive for the next several hours, flitting from chain restaurants to homes, hoping to make enough money to feed the children in the backseat.
We do this because I’ve been furloughed. Until Oct. 1, I worked at the Department of Veterans Affairs. I monitored and oversaw crisis calls from veterans who contacted the department’s hotline, ensuring they received the information, services and resources if needed. In late September, I accepted a detail to a new role, but before I could start, the federal government shut down. In the new detail, I was no longer considered an “essential worker,” and so I was shut down, too.
I haven’t been paid in more than a month, and with the shutdown now the longest in American history, I don’t know when I’ll get to go back…