Peggy Goodale knows how dangerous this government shutdown will be for Florida’s most vulnerable children. She has firsthand experience delivering the very services that are going to be affected.
“I used to be one of those people that turned tax dollars into helping kids in the foster care program, delivering developmental services and so much more,” said Goodale, an AFSCME retiree living in Florida’s 13th Congressional District. The district covers a populous Central Florida region along the Gulf Coast.
“I worked for the state for 32 years so I know that here in Florida we can’t have a thriving state without support from the federal government. And this giveaway to billionaires like Elon Musk is going to turn us from thriving to suffering,” Goodale said.
Goodale is referring to the fact that the president and his yes-men and women in Congress forced a government shutdown, so they could protect the massive tax breaks to billionaires and greedy corporations they passed in the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill.”
On top of the direct impact to services, extreme health care cuts will kick millions of working families off their care and skyrocket health care costs, further hurting vulnerable children.
As states, cities and towns are already facing budget shortfalls and families are experiencing a health care crisis, this shutdown threatens the vital services that Goodale used to provide.
Even in the best of times, Goodale said, she and her co-workers used to struggle to meet the needs of their clients. They were stretched too thin, without the funding they needed.
“It was a rewarding job but also heartbreaking because we could never give families the proper amount of help,” said Goodale. “It really showed you how much positive you could do with just a little compassion, how much families could benefit with even just a little bit of the resources our nation and our state could so easily afford to provide.”
The shutdown is only going to deepen that heartbreak. Without funding to support the work that AFSCME members do, furloughs and even layoffs are expected.
Goodale is urging Congress to stop playing partisan games with our health, our jobs and our families.
AFSCME members are urging Congress to put working people first by lowering health care costs, protecting federal workers, and funding public services.