[Kaslin]

John Stossel forgot the military and that the troops would not have been paid had the shutdown been continued.

[trebb]

He did forget them but his meme hits home that nobody really got damaged during the 2013 shutdown (or the 1995 one) and after the fizzle of last week’s “shutdown” nobody is really afraid of another one if Schumer decides to double down in a few weeks. It’s a toothless threat and all he has left in his pitiful arsenal...

[RitchieAprile]

Security clearance investigations would be suspended as well.

[Sicon]

In slow times, AT&T cut 40,000 workers.

I was one of them, back in late 2004 (it took a while for the Dot Com bubble burst to ripple through a gargantuan company like AT&T). In a few weeks after being laid off (what AT&T called, in truly Orwellian fashion, “Voluntary Forced Retirement”), I had another job, which less than a year later, was paying me 65% more than AT&T had been. So, the layoff was good for AT&T, and it was good for me. Yay capitalism!

[Red Badger]

The government shuts down every weekday at 4 pm.................

[I want the USA back]

The government never closed. It cannot close. Certain well-chosen sectors were were paused, enabling the media to over-hype the effect in order to instill fear and anxiety in the public.

The government is a great big feeding teat connected to the iron fist of taxation. It gives, and it takes away.

[Vigilanteman]

Sell some monuments to private groups so we don't need federal workers to maintain them.

We actually have a Pennsylvania Park Service historical battlefield in our county. They wanted to shut it down because the budget showed a deficit and their weren't the votes to increase taxes.

The local hisorical society and a volunteer group stepped in to take over operations. They hired one paid person (with a grant) to be volunteer coordinator. The four Pennsylvania State Park Rangers who were doing the work before plus some contractors were no longer needed.

Who remembers when public libraries were largely staffed by volunteers with a mere handful of paid positions?

[Pollster1]

I agree. There are large swaths of FedGov that I would like to see shut down permanently. Most of HHS is at the top of that list, and most of EPA, and 100% of Labor, and 100% of Education, and 100% of BATFE, and . . . I could go on for much longer.

I’d even eliminate a significant chunk of the military. Ask the service chiefs to choose which (roughly) 20% of each branch they want to give up - much more than that for the USAF, far less for the USMC.