SACRAMENTO, Calif — As the federal government shutdown stretches on with no immediate end in sight, one Sacramento airport worker says she’s barely holding on.
Mary Becker, a Transportation Security Administration officer at Sacramento International Airport, said she has gone without pay for two pay periods.
“I’ve missed two paychecks now,” Becker said. She’s still showing up to work every day — even as bills pile up and she struggles to care for her 9-month-old daughter, Alice.
“We’ve had to ask for help when buying diapers and formula, because formula is very expensive — especially since she has a dairy allergy, so we have to get goat milk formula,” Becker said. “And then she got sick during all this, so it was having to ask the pediatrician’s office to delay payment because I can’t afford the $50 copay right now to have her seen. I mean, there was a point she went four times in a matter of two weeks to the pediatrician because she caught hand-foot-and-mouth disease.”
Becker has worked for the TSA for nine years and has lived through two government shutdowns. But this one, she said, feels much harder — especially as a single mother…