Federal employees missed their first paycheck last week; from here on
in, every milestone dramatically exacerbates the pain of the shutdown: a
halt to aviation as TSA screeners quit en masse, civil cases stall in
federal courts, 38 million hungry Americans denied food stamps and 10%
of food sales in the US vanishing; deals expiring with the landlords of
40,000 low income households; then 2.2 million more households are
imperiled; landlords renting to federal agencies will go without rent
but won’t be able to evict federal tenants, triggering mortgage and debt
defaults; prison guards go from today’s skeleton crew to near-total
absenteeism; city buses stop running as Federal Transport Agency
payments dry up; drugs fall out of the FDA pipeline, denying medication
to ill and dying people; and of course, every IPO is stalled (and maybe
DOA) for so long as the shutdown continues.
All this to keep a racist promise to build a useless wall.
