As Government Shutdown Stalemate Persists, Frustration Defies Party Lines

The partisan standoff that has shut down the government became personal for Cyndie Story in late October, when she logged in to her health insurance portal to find that her premium was about to nearly double.

“I just can’t swing $2,200 a month,” Ms. Story, a 60-year-old self-employed school nutrition consultant in Zebulon, Ga., said of her expected rate starting in January.

Ms. Story is just the kind of person Democrats say they are fighting for as they refuse to fund the government until Republicans agree to negotiate an extension of federal health care tax credits that are on track to expire at the end of the year, sending premiums soaring.

But with the shutdown entering its sixth week, she has grown alarmed by its impacts and eager for it to end. To Ms. Story, a Democrat whose small business helps feed hungry children whose families could be affected by a lapse in federal nutrition benefits, the impasse feels like “being asked to choose which arm to cut off.”

“To choose between feeding hungry families and my health care,” Ms. Story said on Monday, “I’m going to feed the family.”

As the shutdown stretched into Wednesday and became the longest in history, the partisan divisions in Washington appeared as deep as ever.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said that it would be a “betrayal” for Democrats to back down now. “It would be a sellout of a working class that is struggling to survive in very difficult economic times,” he wrote in an essay for The Guardian last weekend.

Recent polling suggests that Republicans are bearing the brunt of the blame for the shutdown.

Among registered voters, 46 percent blamed Republicans while 37 percent blamed Democrats, according to a Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll. Those figures were mirrored in another poll conducted by Newsweek and NBC News, which found that 52 percent of voters say Republicans and the president are more responsible for the impasse, compared with 42 percent who blame Democrats.

But in some pockets of the country, as Americans experience the effects of the closure firsthand, the calls for an end to the dysfunction and a swift reopening of the government defy party lines.

In conversations with voters in Georgia in recent days, many said that while they shared Democrats’ sense of urgency about addressing rising health care costs, they had grown impatient for the shutdown to end.

In Paulding County, frustration with both parties was easy to find. Jon Smalling, 40, a Democrat who voted in local elections this week, said: “You’ve got to blame everybody.”

“I think both sides have got to give a little,” he said.

Mr. Smalling said he sympathized with Democrats’ focus on health care costs and was bracing for his health insurance costs to rise next year. Still, he said, “it’s gone on long enough.”

“At some point,” he added, “both parties need to sit down and figure a way out.”

His congresswoman, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, has been among the very few members of Congress denouncing both sides in the stalemate. Ms. Greene, a right-wing Republican, has criticized Democrats for shutting down the government, but also rebuked her party for failing to negotiate a solution that would insulate Americans against the looming premium hikes or to offer a plan to make health care more affordable.

“People are beyond outraged, and they’re terrified,” she said Tuesday on the ABC program “The View.”

The growing impatience for an end to the shutdown may be driving events in Washington, where Republicans and Democrats have both expressed optimism in recent days that a breakthrough after weeks of gridlock could be close at hand.

“Finances are becoming dire for the more than 750,000 government workers who have been going without pay now for a full month,” Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, said on the Senate floor on Tuesday.

“The list of people begging Democrats to pass a clean government extension is long and it’s growing longer,” Mr. Thune said, citing calls from a growing list of labor unions and business groups. “All of these organizations are begging Democrats to take yes for an answer.”

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, was not budging.

“We’re not asking for anything radical,” he said. “Lowering people’s health care costs is the definition of common sense and what Americans want all across the spectrum.”

Ms. Story said she agreed, and even left her congressman, Representative Brian Jack, a Republican and former Trump White House aide, a voice mail message pleading for a better solution.

But she still wants to see Democrats relent and reopen the government.

“If it was up to me personally, I’d bite the bullet,” she said, quickly adding that she still wanted Congress to address health care costs.

Chad Hahn, a Paulding County resident who declined to share his party affiliation, voiced similar frustration.

“Both sides need to figure out a solution,” he said.

In Athens, Erin Barger, the chief executive of the Food Bank of Northeast Georgia, said that even before the shutdown began, residents across the 15 counties her organization serves were experiencing “unprecedented levels of nutritional need.”

She said her team was working quickly to confront an emergency as many families they serve have already missed scheduled Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program payments after the Trump administration said it would cover only a portion of them.

“We still know that neighbors will not have SNAP benefits on time, no matter what happens now, which we consider an emergency,” she said. “We firmly believe that food insecurity and hunger are not just bipartisan — they’re nonpartisan issues.”