ST. PAUL — The blind are losing reading services. A help line for the elderly has gone silent. And poor families are scrambling after the state stopped child care subsidies.

Hours after a political impasse forced a widespread government shutdown, Minnesota’s most vulnerable residents and about 22,000 laid-off state employees began feeling the effects on Friday. With no immediate end in sight to a dispute over taxes and spending, political leaders spent the day blaming each other for their failure to pass a budget that solves the state’s $5 billion deficit.

Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton and GOP legislative leaders said they had no plans to talk over the holiday weekend, guaranteeing the shutdown will linger at least well into next week. Dayton said he thought lawmakers should spend time in their districts talking to constituents.

In the absence of talks, the shutdown was rippling into the lives of people like Sonya Mills, a 39-year-old mother of eight facing the loss of about $3,600 a month in state child care subsidies. Until the government closure, Mills had been focused on recovering from a May 22 tornado that displaced her from a rented home in Minneapolis. Now she’s adding a new problem to her list.

“It just starts to have a snowball effect. It’s like you are still in the wind of the tornado,” said Mills, who works at a temp agency and was allowed to take time off as she gets back on her feet — but after the shutdown also has to care for her six youngest children, ages 3 through 14, because she lost state funding for their daycare and other programs.