The political climate in this country is growing more and more hostile each day, what with fights like the border wall debate eating up headlines that is all at the expense of federal workers and contractors that have been without work for an over a month.

I’m not going to lie and say that I’m an unbiased, total centrist that is frustrated with both dueling parties. I’m not. I’m a staunch liberal that vehemently opposes the wall and what it stands for.

That’s not to say I’m against compromise. Politics is a game of compromise, and it feels as though recently elected representatives have forgotten that. Concessions are part of what our senators and representatives do so that their constituency doesn’t bear the brunt of an undue burden.

It seems as though today, representatives have forgotten about the very constituency they serve. Senators from Kentucky and their constituency are not threatened by migrants approaching the southern border. Yet, these same senators are still adamant on a border wall that will direct their constituency’s federal taxes to a wall — one that quite frankly doesn’t do too much to protect their interests as residents of Kentucky.

So why do these elected officials still choose to basically ignore what’s best for the people who elected them in the first place? The answer is simple: our legislative branch no longer cares about their own people. Partisanship is now more important to politicians than the very people who elected them.

The sad fact is that the legislative branch is crumbling beneath our feet. If politicians did their job, they would focus on passing bills to fight issues like the opioid epidemic, which has found itself raging through almost every state in the US.

The opposing parties no longer care for the well-being of the people and the role government plays in that. If they did, budgets wouldn’t only coast us through a couple of months before it runs out and federal workers wouldn’t be the collateral damage in partisan spats.

We’re putting federal workers lives and their families at risk. Partisanship at the expense of federal workers is a crime. We’re making for federal workers go to food banks  just to get a warm meal, while others have even gone to extreme lengths just to survive this shutdown such as insulin rationing, a deadly decision that has costed the lives of so many Americans due to the price of insulin increasing.

Politicians need to understand that it is not just about their affiliation anymore. People in their district are about to lose their second paycheck in a row. Concessions and compromise must be made. Even if the result is not something I’ll ultimately not be ecstatic about, adults in government need to realize that government funding is not something you’re supposed to ‘win,’ it’s something you must do as a member of our legislative branch.