Thirty-four days, as I type this.
Thirty-four days since our government failed, shut down, deadlocked. Whatever you want to call it.
Thirty-four days, two full paychecks for 800,000 American citizens who are growing increasingly desperate.
Thirty-four days since our government has functioned to even its normal minimum levels of competency and service.
Thirty-four days, more than a month now with no end in sight, since your food was fully inspected for safety, since your taxes were processed or there was somebody available at the IRS helplines to provide advice and support (you, however, will still be required to file on time or suffer the consequences for your failure). Thirty-four days since your national parks and national museums were staffed and patrolled and cleaned. It’s now been more than a month since those who guide more than a hundred thousand commercial airline flights safely through the skies every day have been paid, since those who guard your airports and seaports and transportation systems have been paid.
What’s that?
Don’t worry, don’t cry, when this shut down is over, they’ll get paid?
Sure. Maybe. Probably. But that eventual paycheck won’t pay the overdraft fees on bounced checks or the penalties from overdrawn accounts or the fines for late rent or the interest on short term loans or make up for the things families had to do without.
You want to know how bad it is?
Do you?
...
This is a disgrace we will never live down.
Tens of thousands of government contractors have been sent home. A lot of them won’t get paid. There won’t be any back pay for them. And don’t tell me they will get paid, because I know better. See, I used to be one of them. After the second government shutdown in a year and losing more than a month’s pay, I quit. I walked away from government contracting and America got the short end of the deal on that one. I had 30 years of experience, first as career military, then as a government employee. Much of my training and knowledge came from that service – just like the vast majority of government contractors. The United States gets a pretty damned good Return on Investment by hiring us. I took that and walked away. Became a writer. Put my fate into my own hands, for good or ill. Because I was sick of working for free, sick of working for faithless selfish sons of bitches, sick of not knowing from month to month or contract to contract if the projects I started, the effort I invested, would be thrown away because a bunch of goddamned children in Washington could not, or would not, do their jobs. In the end, I walked away because I was sick and goddamned tired of being treated like trash by my own government. It’ll be the same here. Irreplaceable talent will go out the door, lost forever. And your government will become even more inefficient, more unskilled, more inexperienced and will have to pay to find and train new people, those desperate enough – or stupid enough – to put up with being treated like shit.
It’s happening right now.
And it’s going to get worse.
