CLEVELAND, Ohio – Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown and Rep. Tim Ryan said Tuesday Republican President Donald Trump was needlessly harming federal workers who aren’t being paid due to the ongoing partial government shutdown.

The shutdown, now in its 17th day, came after Republican President Donald Trump reneged on a deal with congressional Republicans and Democrats over funding for his long-promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Some federal employees, such Transportation Safety Administration and Bureau of Prisons officers, have technically been working without pay, but Friday will mark the first pay period when they won’t take home a check.

“This is real hardship on a whole lot of families and it’s all inflicted on them because the commander in chief wants to score political points on building a wall that the Mexicans – he promised that the Mexicans would pay for it,” Brown said during a media availability early Tuesday morning at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport before meeting with TSA workers.

Workers at the Federal Correction Institution in Elkton are also on the cusp of going without pay.

“I think when the president says it’s going to go on months and months and months, it’s disrespectful to these workers,” said Ryan, who visited the prison Tuesday to speak with workers.

Trump has said the immigration is an impending threat and that he would not sign a funding bill that did not include appropriations for the wall.

Brown and Ryan, who appeared separately and have both expressed an interest in running for president in 2020, criticized Trump over trying to score political points at the expense of workers.

While most federal workers will receive back pay once Washington passes a funding bill, that doesn’t help workers who are living paycheck to paycheck.

“For a billionaire New York developer who inherited – What did he say $50 million from his dad? – to say that these workers living on 30-40-50 thousand a year can afford to give up a couple paychecks and they’ll figure out a way through it shows an insensitivity, tone deafness and ignorance that I would hope the commander in chief didn’t have,” Brown said.

“We’re acting like a third world country here,” Ryan said. “We’re supposed to be a superpower.”

Aaron Bankston, president of the union representing TSA officers in Ohio, said serious challenges could befall the more than 800 agents in the state if they miss payday. A TSA officer’s starting salary is roughly $30,000, and Bankston said many workers are the primary income earners in their household, but still live paycheck-to-paycheck.

“You’ve got to decide between putting food on the table or gas in your car,” Bankston said. “That hurts. When you’re the main breadwinner in your family, there’s nothing you can really do.”

Megan Fitzsimmons, the secretary of the prison officer union in Elkton and a GED teacher, said her coworkers are facing similar challenges with an added twist.

Prison officers have a skill set that makes them a fit for other jobs such as security, Fitzsimmons said. But because federal regulations bar them from working those type of jobs, their options are limited.

Couple that with mandatory overtime and the fact many of the workers in Elkton are around 50 years old – an age where it can be difficult to find work at all – and prison officers lack options, Fitzsimmons said.

“All these options that they talk about, they’re not really there,” she said. “There’s no options for us. The options are you come to work, do your job, and hope you get paid at some point.”

Neither Brown nor Ryan had any clue when a breakthrough in funding negotiations might happen.

Publicly, negotiations have been at a standstill.

Trump initially agreed to a funding deal in December with congressional leadership and the Republican-controlled Senate passed a bill. But after facing backlash over the deal, which did not include funding for the border wall, Trump changed his mind, saying he was “proud to shut the government down over border security.”

Other Republicans, including those who voted for the original funding bill, have since followed suit.

“It’s pain inflicted by a commander in chief that bragged about shutting the government down. It’s petty and it’s politics and it needs to stop,” Brown said. “We passed a bill unanimously. The president needs to sign something.”

Trump has toyed with the idea of declaring a national emergency absent funding, which would allow him to unilaterally shift dollars from other departments to his proposed wall. He is scheduled to give an Oval Office address tonight pleading his case for funding the wall.

Brown said Republican senators privately told him they don’t agree with Trump on the wall or the shutdown.

Republican Sen. Rob Portman, who has said he doesn’t support government shutdowns, said during a conference call with reporters he hoped funding negotiations would pick up soon.

“I don’t think we’re that far apart,” Portman said. “I think a lot of this is politics and a lot of it is people talking past one another. My hope is that, again, this week is a time, following the president’s address tonight and whatever response the Democrats response have to that that we actually roll up our sleeves and figure out how to move forward.”

Convincing Republican senators – especially those who already voted for a funding bill – to join Democrats and pass a bill will likely be key to ending the shutdown, Brown said.

“I think Republican senators are realizing that this isn’t good for the country,” Brown said. “We work with them, we pass something again overwhelmingly and the president either signs something or we override his veto.”

Trump is scheduled to speak live tonight at 9 p.m. on CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox and PBS as well as cable networks CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer will address the nation immediately following Trump’s speech.