As the government shutdown stretches into a third week, Congressman Ryan Mackenzie visited a local Head Start program in Lehighton to discuss the impacts.

Mackenzie traveled to the PathStone Carbon County Head Start building at 110 N. Third St., Tuesday afternoon, reading to children and discussing the impasse with parents.

Mackenzie said he’s an advocate for early childhood education, “so programs like Head Start and Early Start are phenomenal resources, and we want to make sure that these types of programs continue in our area.”

Mackenzie said both the state budget and the federal budget are in limbo.

“As a federal representative, I’m very concerned that our federal funding isn’t going out,” Mackenzie said. “I voted already for what we call a Clean Continuing Resolution back in September which would have fully funded the government, it went through the house, it is now over in the Senate.”

But in the U.S. Senate, Mackenzie said they need 60 votes to pass a budget like this, and right now Republicans only have a 53-seat majority, they’ve had a couple Democrats come along with them, but not enough to get to that 60-vote threshold.

“We’re advocating that all of our Democratic colleagues over in the Senate actually vote to move this through,” he said. “It is a bipartisan-aimed continuing resolution, it was already approved in March and before that even during the last year of the Biden Administration. So what is going on now I think it’s ridiculous, I think it’s reckless, and we want to make sure that funding goes out so that programs like this are not impacted in the coming weeks and months.”

Mackenzie urged families and staff to be proactive.

“In programs like this, so much of the budget is in-staff salaries and compensation because we know how important teachers are in the classroom. And so we do want to make sure that we continue to actually provide this funding, but then we should be having discussions about how to increase funding going forward as well to keep pace with the inflation that we’ve seen for four years, the cost of living is up for everybody and government-sponsored programs that have employees, we need to make sure their salaries keep pace with the rest of the market as well.

Mackenzie said the short-term measure he supported would have kept the government open through November while Congress finalized appropriations.

Beth Ann Sheckler, director of Child and Family Development Program, PathStone Carbon County Head Start, said they jumped at the idea of having Mackenzie visit the school.

“Here in Carbon, what really affected us was the state budget not being passed,” said Sheckler, who noted that delayed the opening of their pre-K Counts Program for 30 days until Oct. 1. “And then going forward with that, since there’s no state budget passed, we’re evaluating that on a regular basis to see how funding is coming in and how we’re spending it.”

Earlier in the day, Mackenzie visited Lehigh Valley International Airport to thank local federal workers and discuss the ongoing shutdown.