In an eleventh-hour attempt to politically have their cake and eat it too, Senate Democrats followed their 13th consecutive veto of the GOP’s clean spending bill, which would reopen the government. It was a failed bid to carve out an exemption for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides taxpayer-funded groceries to 1 in 8 Americans.

But the real political pain for Democrats is not that the federal government has run out of funds to give to people who do not work. Rather, it’s that as the shutdown enters its second month, a growing number of paychecks are being halted for the federal workers who do work.

As early as Oct. 27, the nation’s largest union for federal workers broke ranks with the Democrats to whom it disproportionately donates and urged the party to pass the clean, continuing resolution written by the Republicans. But as the American Federation of Government Employees knows, the worst is yet to come.

At the start of November, the number of federal workers going without paychecks doubles to nearly 4 million, the overwhelming majority of whom aren’t merely furloughed, but deemed “essential” and thus obliged to work without pay. The number has skyrocketed so astronomically because, unlike in the previous record-setting shutdown that spanned from 2018 to 2019, Democrats have blocked the Pentagon-specific appropriations bill that would allow some 2 million military members to be paid.

Even exclusively among civilian payrolls, more essential workers have continued to work without pay than there are furloughed workers, those who at least have the time to work other temporary gigs or the ability to save on usual necessities such as childcare.

The federal government may remain vast enough that some essential personnel ought to be considered superfluous, but as members of Congress and consumers are about to learn, plenty are not. As with the 2018-2019 shutdown, the breaking point for the economy as a whole may be airline travel.

During the first Trump administration, air traffic controllers did not go on strike, but enough finally called in sick that the Federal Aviation Administration was forced to limit flights around the country’s biggest airports. By the end of fiscal 2018, the FAA reported having more than 14,000 certified air traffic controllers and ATCs in training.

By the end of the last fiscal year, there were more than 600 fewer ATCs, with the FAA warning that the nation is some 3,500 ATCs short of target staffing levels. This unsavory fact was thrust into the national spotlight in January when a military Black Hawk fatally crashed into a commercial flight landing in Washington, D.C., while the local ATC tower was understaffed by nearly a third below target levels.

Considering that the district’s understaffing problem was no anomaly (two-thirds of ATC centers were operating at or below 75% of the FAA’s staffing target even before the shutdown), ATCs are operating on an even thinner margin than they were in 2018.

It’s a travesty that essential federal workers we all regard as essential — the Customs officials responsible for collecting tariffs as imports enter the country, the deportation officers who rid the country of illegal immigrant gang members and violent criminals, the Secret Service agents protecting a president who has already survived two assassination attempts — will not be paid immediately for the work they continue to do. In the case of ATCs, they now have to balance their 10-hour shifts with gig work such as driving Uber.

If enough ATCs break under the pressure that the FAA no longer deems airline travel safe, the consequences could be economically ruinous: recall that a 90-minute FAA ground stop in 2023 caused by a system outage cost the economy over $100 million overnight.

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But the moral crime may be right under the noses of congressional Democrats. While the Constitution demands that members of Congress never go without pay and federal law mandates that federal employees are eventually reimbursed with back pay, the same is not true for workers contracted by the federal government. In some cases, these are white-collar contractors, but on the Capitol grounds, these are custodial and cafeteria workers. Those deemed essential are required to work with zero promise of pay, either now or in the future.

Democrats may only bend when the shutdown threatens to tank the Thanksgiving travel season, but the most egregious evidence of their dereliction of duty is the people they see the most, the low-wage — now no-wage — service workers who literally clean up their messes and let them eat cake while they take home six-figure salaries, shutdown be damned.