BUFFALO, N.Y. — The political battle lines have been drawn in the federal government shutdown and we as Western New York taxpayers and U.S. citizens are now caught in the middle along with many federal workers.

2 On Your Side has been following some of the back and forth and also looked at how a local agency is ready to help those in need.

The federal government shutdown signs are up and so is the shutdown rhetoric from all sides and all levels of government, with no apparent surface signs of negotiation yet.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R, South Dakota) said Wednesday: "Chuck Schumer, at the behest of a bunch of liberal far-left activist groups, has walked his Democrat colleagues into a boxed canyon."

Then U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, New York) on the floo

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