KSHB 41 reporter Grant Stephens covers stories of consumer interest. Share your story idea with Grant.
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For Daniel Scharpenburg and thousands of his colleagues at the Internal Revenue Service, the hardest part of the prolonged federal government shutdown isn’t just the missing paycheck. It’s not knowing when their lives — and their work — will start again.
“All week, and all last week, like people have been just panicking,” Scharpenburg said. “When I was leaving [last week], I saw people crying because they just don’t know what’s going to happen. And the uncertainty is the hardest part.”
In Kansas City, more than 34,000 employees work for the federal government.
Already, many are feeling the ripple effects: unpaid rent, mounting bills, and growing anxiety over whether they’ll be paid once the impasse in Washington ends.
Scharpenburg, a longtime IRS employee and single father, said he asked his landlord to defer rent to keep a roof over his head.
“I’m gonna go crazy if I get ahead of myself and think about all the bills I have all at once. So I gotta do one at a time,” he said.
Beyond the financial strain, Scharpenburg said he’s returning to an administration that has questioned back pay and threatened cuts, making him feel unwelcome and unwanted.
“It made me feel like the administration does not understand the importance of the work we do, and does not understand that we’re real people," he said. "You know, if they think of us as numbers, that’s a problem. This is a career; this is not a job.”
For Scharpenburg, survival means focusing on one bill at a time and holding out hope for an end to the shutdown. The politics may be playing out in Washington, he says, but the pain is landing squarely on real people.
“We took these jobs because we thought it was a stable career, and it was, for many, many years, was a stable career and opportunities for growth and a pretty good place to work," Scharpenburg said. "And now it's slowly sort of become a less stable career, and now we don't even know. We don't even know what's going to happen. We can't count on it.
“That’s like an abusive relationship. It feels like, right? If you’re in a relationship with someone, you start treating them badly because you hope they leave. Like it’s the same thing, we feel like we’re in an abusive relationship.”
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