Washington Republican Rep. Tom Cole ripped into the Senate Democrats this week for choosing politics over people, bluntly warning that their refusal to pass a clean continuing resolution is holding everyday Americans hostage. Cole — who authored a short, nonpartisan funding measure that would keep the government running — told viewers the consequences are not theoretical and that Democrats are playing chicken with the livelihoods of hardworking families.
The shutdown began at 12:01 a.m. on October 1, 2025, and already the effects are real and painful for communities across the country as federal operations grind to a halt. Roughly nine hundred thousand federal workers face furloughs while hundreds of thousands more are forced to work without pay, and critical programs from nutrition assistance to grant processing are being interrupted.
Perhaps the cruelest consequence of this manufactured crisis is the looming threat to military pay: unless Congress acts in short order, active-duty troops and many Defense civilians risk missing their October 15 paychecks despite serving on the front lines of national security. Conservatives have long said you don’t bait and switch the men and women who keep America safe, and yet Democrats’ intransigence has now put those families under unnecessary strain.
Adding insult to injury, an Office of Management and Budget memo has stoked fear by arguing that back pay is not automatically guaranteed after a shutdown, reversing decades of precedent and amplifying uncertainty for furloughed workers. This novel legal posture shows how far the Biden-era apparatus and its allies will go to weaponize bureaucracy against ordinary Americans — and it’s Democrats who own this standoff.
From veterans waiting on paperwork to mothers reliant on WIC benefits and federal employees at bases and labs across Oklahoma, families are paying the price for a Democratic power play that should shame every senator who’s sitting on their hands. House Republicans already passed a clean, commonsense stopgap — the ball is in the Senate’s court; if Democrats truly cared about service members and the vulnerable, they’d stop the theatrics and vote to reopen the government right now.
