How a Government Shutdown Could Impact the Bay Area

As a government shutdown looms, Bay Area leaders are bracing for impacts that would include airport delays just days before Christmas; hundreds of thousands of federal workers in the state losing pay; and, if it dragged on, low-income families losing access to food benefits.

More than 7,600 federal workers in San Francisco alone would be furloughed or forced to work without pay if there’s a total government shutdown, according to Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi’s office. Across California, she said, more than 400,000 people — including more than 213,000 members of the armed forces and 187,000 federal workers — would be forced to go without a paycheck.

North Bay Democratic Congressman Jared Huffman said Friday morning that he’s not optimistic about the chances of the GOP cutting a deal in time for the midnight deadline.

“If these guys shut the government down, as it looks like they’re trying to do, it is going to devastate the people of California, the people in my district,” Huffman said. “I’ve lived through two of these government shutdowns before, and everybody loses. They don’t save money. They devastate people’s lives. And at the end of the day, everybody’s mad at the Republicans who forced us to live through it. And here they go again.”

Huffman said he has 13,000 people in his district alone who stand to lose benefits through a program that provides free healthy food, breastfeeding support, nutrition education and other help to families with kids under age 5.

And, he said in addition to the airport delays when TSA agents and air traffic controllers are forced to work without pay, national parks and Bureau of Land Management areas will be without staff in the case of a shutdown, causing what Huffman called “chaos.”

“I’ve seen it — restrooms quickly become unusable and unsanitary, trash dumpsters and bins start overflowing. I mean, it becomes unsafe. There aren’t rangers and federal personnel. And sometimes, these areas have to simply be closed off. So that’s terrible for the environment. It’s terrible for the folks who use these facilities. It’s terrible for the economy.”

It’s not just more rural districts like Huffman’s that would be affected by the national parks being shuttered, said Jeff Cretan, a spokesman for San Francisco Mayor London Breed. He noted that the Presidio and Crissy Field fields will be without staff and technically closed in the case of a shutdown.

And eventually, Cretan added, a prolonged closure of the federal government could be problematic for federally funded agencies like the San Francisco Housing Authority.

Republicans in Congress tanked a deal to fund the government through March earlier this week after billionaire Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump savaged the bipartisan spending agreement. House GOP Speaker Mike Johnson went back to the drawing board on Thursday, introducing a pared-down measure that included extending the debt limit for two years — a last-minute demand from Trump that surprised many fiscal hawks in Congress.

Ultimately, Johnson was unable to convince his caucus to take that second spending bill over the finish line on Thursday night, with 38 Republicans voting against it. Johnson was struggling Friday to find a compromise measure.

While benefits like Medicare and Social Security are authorized separately and will continue in the case of a shutdown, Los Angeles Democratic Congresswoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove said that departments including Agriculture and the Small Business Administration would have to pause processing loans for small businesses, farmers and others if there’s a shutdown.

She said Democrats are in no mood to save Republicans, who she blamed for the prospect of a shutdown. Kamlager-Dove noted that Republicans reneged on the initial legislation, which was the result of bipartisan negotiations.

“Democrats are incredibly defiant, and we have realized that we are no longer going to be polite or predictable,” she said. “You come to us, you honor your word. You deal in, negotiate the way adults do, or else Republicans cannot do anything in this Congress nor the next without Democrats. They just do not have the votes. …So they need us. So don’t try and punk us and take everything off the negotiating table that we negotiated in. And then come and demand that we vote for you. That is not how this goes.”

South Bay Democratic Rep. Anna Eshoo also took issue with some of the critiques Republicans and Musk had of that compromise bill, saying she worked hard across the aisle to fund programs that will help kids with cancer and rare diseases receive life-saving treatment.

“Now, thanks to a tweet from an unelected billionaire, Elon Musk, House Republicans have abandoned this legislation that saves children’s lives,” Eshoo said in a written statement. “Every child deserves access to the best possible healthcare and a healthy start to life, but Republicans have walked away from that promise to our nation’s children.”

KQED’s Sydney Johnson contributed to this report.