Financial pain and complications carry over to the low-income people their work helps.

"We help a lot of people in rural areas find houses and keep them," said Vincent Cuenca, an insurance claims specialist for the USDA. "We handle people who can't get loans through regular banks. We're a lender of last resort."

But he says those wide-ranging loans the office provides are now on hold, complicating everything from nationwide housing construction projects to rebuilding efforts in hurricane-damaged areas like the Carolinas, Florida Panhandle, and Puerto Rico.

"We'll do everything we can to mitigate the effects of this, but inevitably there are follow-along consequences," Cuenca said. "There can be lasting scars to credit scores."

Rhetoric out of Washington, though, makes it sound as if the standstill will continue, with President Donald Trump demanding funding for a wall along the country's southern border.

Some of the protesters Friday expressed a desire for "leadership" instead of a continued "tantrum" at the national level of politics, said Donna Rogers, a USDA accounting technician. Others gave reasons for why the wall wouldn't be an effective means of meeting its supposed objective of cutting down on illegal immigration.