I took one day off to make Christmas a five-day weekend. I've been off work for ten days now, with no end in sight.

[Lurkily]

As a fed, I am affected by the US Government shutdown currently in effect. I took Friday off, and Monday/Tuesday were holidays.  The shutdown has been in effect through the holiday, and the rest of the week.  Payday for me is normally Monday, so my check is probably going to be late.  Luckily, I have credit, resources, and people that can help me if I need to, but I know a lot of feds live paycheck to paycheck.  Lean times are ahead for a lot of people if this drags out.

[Micha]

A Government shutdown is such a strange concept. Why would you shut down important services just because there are some budget disagreements 🤔

Hope its over soon and you can go back to work!

[Lurkily]

Some services are still running.  The people who are TSO's, as I used to be, are still working.  They worked during the Christmas rush, the roughest travel season of the year, without knowing if they'd get paid on time.  Now it's looking like they may not, and I know a lot of TSA officers live paycheck-to-paycheck.

The reason - and I'll try to avoid including any party-line opinion here - is that a while ago, we had one big dispute about long-term funding.  So instead of resolving the issue, we made one short-term resolution to get people paid and working again.  Since then, instead of being able to agree on long-term funding going forward, we've been passing short-term resolutions, and every single time we have to come to some agreement on what that will look like.  Anything that you intend to pay for via appropriations has to be included here. This is also why congressional and presidential salaries aren't furloughed - they aren't paid via appropriations.

Right now the issue is that the president wants Congress to commit to paying for the wall along our southern border via appropriations.  Given the questioned usefulness of it and high cost, along with the political hit they'd take, they don't want to give Trump that win. 

I think this was entirely intentional on the part of his opponents.  Through some strategic goading, he's been coaxed to paint himself into a corner.  He can't walk back his demands without losing face, and he can't stand his ground without losing face.  The only way for him to win this exchange was if Congress were to cave quickly, but he took responsibility for the shutdown even before it happened, so the pressure is all on him, not on Congress.

[Lurkily]

And I realize now that you were probably not asking about the details, but why anybody at any level would ever think it was acceptable to let it come to this, to which I agree.