Gorefest, on 23 January 2019 - 02:17 PM, said:
Meanwhile, day 33 of the shutdown? Wow, never seen anything like it. It seems bizarre that this is even possible. Is there any other country (non-dictatorship) in the world where the entire federal machine can just be shut down over political infighting? It seems like an insane setup. What is the rationale for such a construction? I must confess that my knowledge of American politics is fairly superficial.
The entire federal government is not shut down. Some programs/departments have funding until the end of September (like the Social Security Administration, which funds my work). Others have appropriations running out now or have run out. The federal courts have funding that they've managed to stretch to last until the end of January, upon which they will partially shut down.
A NYTimes article from January 16 said that the average federal worker who has not been paid during this shutdown has missed almost $6,000 in salary. That number has increased over the past week. Considering that most people have less than a month's worth of savings and something like 45% of Americans cannot afford a $400 emergency payment at any given point, this is catastrophic.
I would be able to scrape together 5k from my huge family as a one time thing, but it would put most of us on the brink of insolvency. I have a huge family that would do that for me, but most people don't have that kind of network to rely on. How do they eat? How do they pay rent or the mortgage? How do they continue to go to work bc they cannot strike or take vacation? How do they pay for childcare? How do they afford transportation? The questions and terrible choices go on and on.
The knock on effects are huge - all of the businesses and people and arrangements that rely on this money and those federal workers' work are now damaged too. Maybe irreparably.
The GOP is killing the country. That's clear as day now to many people.
I survived the Permian and all I got was this t-shirt.