Shutdown Devastation: A Partial List
Here we go::Absent a miracle before midnight tomorrow, we’ll have an unnecessary government shutdown reflecting the political paralysis in Washington once again. In addition, a credible rumor has the far right House members seeking to dump Kevin McCartthy as Speaker next week, which would just prolong the pain. There’s plenty of blame to go around, so let’s instead focus on just a few of the many impacts on different people.
- Wine industry: TTB is shut down, meaning no label approvals until it opens up again, creating a backlog that will take a long time to erase. This, however, is essentially an inconvenience.
- Federal employees: The vast majority (of the 400,000) will be furloughed (no work, no pay), halting many government services that we often take for granted.
- Essential federal employees: Military personnel and people like air traffic controllers still have to work, but won’t get paid until the shutdown ends.
- Disaster relief and border security operations will be affected.
- Food aid for children will be cut.
- Members of Congress will still get paid even if they don’t do anything.
Government in action? No, government inaction.
