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October 20, 2025
Dear Georgian,
We are now going on the fourth week of the Democrat manufactured government shutdown. While Democrats partied at their "No Kings" festivals this past week, federal employees are missing paychecks and other services are slowed or on hold. The pain that Americans are now feeling is real and it is the direct cause of two Democrats that represent New York and the other Senators that are voting with them.
Georgia's largest industry is agriculture, and because it is harvest time, this shutdown is particularly damaging for Georgia's farmers.
When crops are harvested, farmers use marketing loans from the USDA to help cashflow. Those loans are used to pay for fertilizer, chemicals, labor, and other costs of growing the food that we eat. With Farm Services Agency offices closed, there is no one to process these loans, and for farmers impacted by last years hurricanes, those applications can not be processed either. The ag economy, and all of rural Georgia, is frozen until the Senate votes to fund the federal government.
We are blessed to have a large military presence in Georgia’s Eighth District, as well as throughout the state of Georgia. Nationally, over 220,000 Department of Defense civilians that perform critical national security activities must continue to report to work but will not be paid until the government is funded. Another 330,000 civilians have been furloughed, including military technicians. This includes at least 4,000 federal employees at Robins Air Force Base.
While Democrats, like Senators Ossoff and Warnock, keep the government closed, all military personnel on active duty, including National Guard and Reservists on Federal orders, must continue to report for duty and carry out assigned orders. To ease the burden, President Trump has stepped up and directed Secretary Hegseth to use $8 billion in unobligated funds to issue paychecks to active duty service members.
Unfortunately, this is just a one-time fix and doesn’t help our civilians or our contractors on base who are vital to the mission and our national security.
Everyone deserves to be paid on time for their work. The waves of a prolonged government shutdown are detrimental to our base communities and it’s time for our senators to stop voting "no" every time they get the chance to reopen the government.
Just a little on the math so you have the facts. The Democrat demand is 1.5 trillion in additional deficit spending for what was an 8 week, clean, continuing resolution. Of the 1.5 trillion, just over 20% is the subsidies paid to the insurance industry that they keep talking about, which, by the way, averaged $44.00 a month per Georgian that received them. I wonder why Georgia's two senators and the other Democrats and their allies in the press don't want to talk about the other 1.2 trillion in additional deficit spending they are trying to extort.
Watch my video below addressing everyone in Georgia's 8th district during this time of uncertainty.
As always, my staff and I are here to help. If you need assistance with a federal agency or have comments or concerns to share with me, please do not hesitate to call my Warner Robins, Tifton, or Washington, D.C. offices. To receive frequent updates, I encourage you to visit my website, like my Facebook page, follow me on YouTube, and follow me on .
Keep reading for the full update.
Sincerely,
Congressman Austin Scott
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