For nearly a month, Senate Democrats have kept the government shut down and held government funding hostage to their partisan demands. Their motivation is pure politics, but their shutdown is having very real consequences, including in South Dakota. Republicans are continuing our efforts to reopen the government. But given Democrats’ determination to prolong the shutdown, Republicans and the Trump administration are working to help hardworking Americans who are being impacted by the shutdown.

South Dakota’s agriculture producers are among those who are being hurt. Due to the shutdown, Farm Service Agency (FSA) offices in South Dakota and across the country were forced to close, leaving farmers and ranchers without access to critical services, and during harvest season no less. Producers who take FSA loans have been unable to certify the sale of their products or cash checks from their sales, and that is simply unacceptable.

From the beginning, I urged the Trump administration to keep FSA offices operational during the shutdown. Unfortunately, shutdowns force the government to make hard choices in the face of limited resources. But over the last several weeks, my office has worked with the Trump administration to find a way to reopen FSA offices, and, because of those efforts, on October 23, FSA offices were able to resume operations.

Farmers and ranchers are not the only victims of Democrats’ shutdown. Military families have turned to food banks in “unprecedented” numbers. Nutrition programs are in jeopardy. South Dakotans on Medicare and in rural areas are dealing with the elimination of telehealth services. And federal employees are working without certainty about their next paycheck. But none of this has been enough for Democrats to back down from their partisan demands and reopen the government. They remain dug in, terrified of the backlash from the far left if they don’t appear to be fighting President Trump hard enough.

Democrats have stood in the way of reopening the government and mitigating the pain of the shutdown every step of the way. They have blocked a nonpartisan funding extension a dozen times. They blocked the bipartisan defense appropriations bill, which would have at least supported national security and paid the troops absent a broader funding deal. And most recently, they blocked a bill to pay any federal employee who is working during the shutdown.

One leading Democrat recently told an interviewer, “Of course, there will be, you know, families that are going to suffer…But it is one of the few leverage times we have.” Are hardworking American families just leverage to Democrats? We need some Democrats to show some courage, say “no” to the far-left activists who demanded this shutdown, and vote to reopen the government.