The woman who gives the kids their music lessons
The guy who takes care of all the leaves in your yard in the fall.
The waitress at the local diner.
The woman who watches the kids for a couple hours after school.
The doctor who gives us our weekly allergy shots.
The owner of the coffee shop on the corner.
The tutor who helps your kids understand math.
We are all dying the economic death of a thousand paper cuts, dealing with customers and clients making rational economic decisions not to spend money because of an irrational cadre of ideologists in the House of Representatives who don’t care for how a bill became a law, how the Supreme Court said the law was OK, or how the American people re-elected the man after whom the law was colloquially named.
Those rational people aren’t just customers or clients. They are our friends, our neighbors, and our family. Thousands of them, furloughed and faced with the loss of their paycheck, with no sense of when that paycheck may resume, make numerous choices on what things they’ll cut back to stretch their budget. I truly empathize. We’ve all been there before. I get it.
Each individual choice is a little nick which by itself is tolerable. It’s not as if we’ve never lost a client before due to a change in economic circumstances. It happens with a sad regularity. All we can do is wish them well and hope to see them back on their feet again soon – knowing full well that we’ll probably never see half of them again.
But this time is different. It isn’t just a handful of people from a local company that is downsizing. This time it is thousands of people who live and work within 5 miles of my business who’ve been furloughed for no good reason. And all of these people are making the choice not to spend money at the same time. Each individual decision may make only a little nick, but it’s too many nicks all at once. I worry that the bleeding isn’t going to stop in time.
We are dying the death of a thousand Congressional paper cuts.
I’ve got payroll to meet, utilities to pay, and rent due at the end of the month. I’ve got suppliers in the same boat who are trying to live with smaller orders than normal. Just because Congress chooses to quit doesn’t mean the private economy can hit pause and wait to see how this Tea Party temper tantrum ends. I just hope my rainy day fund lasts longer than they do.
So please excuse me if I’m a little too quick to shout in anger at every this-shutdown-is-good-for-this-party story I read. Please excuse my desire to smack every smug politician who appears on my TV screen upside his damn head. We aren’t pawns in this game you are playing. We aren’t tallies on some political scoreboard.
We’re just the rabble that does most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. All I ask is that you do your damn job so we can get back to our wonderful lives.
UPDATE October 11, 2013 8:42 AM EDT NBC News posted a list of federal employee density by Congressional district. Check it out to get a sense of what impact the shutdown may have in your community.
I draw customers from MD-3, 2, and 7. They are the 1st, 8th, and 73rd densest Congressional districts for federal employees.