This will probably sound callous, but I think the shutdown may be an opportunity for the US citizenry to discover just what essential services the Federal Government does provide and what are purely wasteful.
The NASA thing made me think about it. Of the 18,000 employees, only about 500 of them are responsible for actually keeping astronauts currently in space alive and the space station functioning? Perhaps then the billions that NASA spends on its other projects run by the other 17,500 employees are a bit, shall we say, excessive for a country that spends (and therefore has to borrow) a trillion more dollars than it makes.
One wonders what other Federal Government endeavours are like this.
I don't like to see people out of work, but it is a valid question to ask whether that work should be undertaken by an insolvent government in the first place.
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