Advocates are trying to avoid a repeat of the last government shutdown, when members of the US Coast Guard lined up at food pantries, while they worked without being paid. 

The tables are mainly empty on a weekday, at VFW Post 3160 in Norfolk, Virginia. Rob Pedersen was post commander during the last government shutdown. He says he can picture the place back in January 2019.

“We asked one of the chiefs over there, at the Coast Guard, what age kids, all of us people had, you know, size diapers. They needed all that kind of stuff,” he said. “We set up like a Walmart with tables. They could just walk through and get what they needed, whether it was diapers, toilet paper, paper towels.”

The pantry drew some workers from NASA, who were also not being paid during the shutdown, but it mainly saw young members of the Coast Guard and their families. Most of them were living paycheck to paycheck, Pedersen said. They came into the post for supplies and a spaghetti dinner. 

“It's amazing when somebody gets a tear in their eye because there's a package of toilet paper they can take for free because they don't have enough money to go buy it,” he said.

Jon Ostrowski, a former coast guardsman and president of the Coast Guard Chief Petty Officers Association, says his office is already getting calls from members, asking what they can do to pay their rent, if they miss a paycheck again. During the last government shutdown, Congress had already passed a defense budget, so most of the military was paid during the shutdown. But the roughly 50,000 members of the Coast Guard are part of the Department of Homeland Security, which had not received an appropriation. Most of the Coast Guard still had to report for duty.  

“We probably have thousands of men, right, men and women right now on board cutters patrolling over in the China Sea and patrolling over in the Persian Gulf,” he said. “We have units all over the place and we kind of get forgotten, you know, because we're part of Homeland Security.”

Another shutdown will make recruiting and retention even harder, he said. The Coast Guard has missed its recruiting targets in each of the last four years. Like other branches of the military, Coast Guard families can be isolated as they are asked to move around the country and even around the globe. 

 “At the same time, they're out there doing their job and worrying about paying their bills or worrying about their credit because they're going to be late on a payment or something,” Ostrowski said.

The VFW has made paying the Coast Guard during a shutdown one of their legislative priorities since the last shutdown ended. 

“The Coast Guard just seems to slip through the cracks,” said Pat Murray, national legislative director for the VFW. 

Some resources for military families will remain open, even if troops aren’t being paid. Military hospitals will keep seeing patients. The military health insurance plan, Tricare, would continue to make payments. 

Congress funds the Veterans Administration on a separate cycle, so VA hospitals will remain open and VA benefit checks will continue to be processed beyond the Sept. 30 deadline, according to a release put out by the VA. But certain services like job placement assistance would be shelved. 

The 2018 to 2019 shutdown was the longest government shutdown, lasting 35 days. This time around, if there is no movement in Congress, the rest of the military won’t receive a paycheck, depending on how long the shutdown continues. 

Congresswoman Jen Kiggans, R-VA 2, is sponsoring a bi-partisan effort to require all active duty members of the military to be paid during a shutdown, including the Coast Guard. A former Navy pilot, Kiggans says is getting emails from groups who work with military families, telling them to approach the companies holding their car loans  and mortgages and ask for an extension.  

“We shouldn't need to be sending those emails out there,” Kiggans said, during a break between votes on the House floor. “It creates a lot of anxiety for our men and women in uniform. And that's really the last thing they need to be worried about.”

So far, the Pay Our Troops bill has not received a hearing in the House. A similar bill is stalled in the Senate.

A recent study by the Rand Corporation says roughly 25 percent of the active duty military already suffer from some level of food insecurity. Norfolk has the highest concentration of US Navy personnel in the world. 

Back at the VFW, past post commander Doug Hoffman worries they will be overwhelmed. 

“This time, it's going to have a larger impact,” Hoffman said. “I'm sure we will help out, but it will be a lot harder because of the amount of people we were able to provide so much because there was very few people. This time there will be more people and less supplies.”

Hoffman, who is also a federal shipyard worker, says he hopes Congress can avoid the shutdown all together.

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