What does the government shutdown really mean to the average citizen?

The answer is: not much.  There is only about 15% or so of the government that will stop operating.  Social Security and Medicare checks will still go out, mail will still be delivered, the military will continue to function (although if the shutdown continues long enough, pay will be disrupted) and ALL other “essential” services will continue to take place.

Now for approximately 800,000 government employees that will be furloughed on Monday, they will be greatly effected.  Ironically that number is roughly equivalent to the number of illegal aliens that the Democrats are trying to “protect” with the demands for DACA to be included in the funding negotiations.  To me that means the Democrats are choosing the non-citizens over the welfare of legal residents (both natural born and naturalized).  Now some of these government workers might be “undocumented” (I prefer the term illegal) workers, but if so the government agencies are not doing a very good job in their hiring practices, and it would still be a very small percentage.

Back to the point, the vast majority of the population will only be effected by minor inconveniences such as not being able to get into some government offices and not get some services such as permits and such. But these things will only be temporarily delayed until the politicians quit playing “one-upmanship” and get back to doing their jobs.

My fear is that this new game of creating an unnecessary crisis of “let’s shutdown the government” is going to become the new normal in how they can put pressure on each other to get what they want.  I blame both parties for this mess.  Not this specific funding argument, but the larger problem of allowing a funding  problem every year because they do not pass legislation to fund the ENTIRE government during their routine course of business.  If they passed a budget and ALL the appropriations bills at the first of each legislative session like they should, we would not be in this cycle of “continuing resolutions” that allows this to take place.

We, the Average Citizens, have to consider sending a message to BOTH parties that we want them to do the peoples business and if they don’t we should look at voting for more independent candidates rather than party affiliated ones.