Once again, we’re witnessing the spectacle of Washington politicians using military pay as a political football while millions of federal workers face uncertainty about their next paycheck. Trump’s directive to pay troops during the shutdown standoff reveals the selective nature of who gets protected when our dysfunctional government fails to function.
Don’t misunderstand—service members absolutely deserve their pay. But this theatrical gesture exposes a deeper hypocrisy about whose labor we value and whose economic security matters in these manufactured crises.
When shutdowns hit, it’s not just military families who struggle. The 2.2 million federal workforce includes TSA agents earning an average of $47,000 annually, food safety inspectors, air traffic controllers, and thousands of other essential workers who keep our society running. These aren’t faceless bureaucrats—they’re working people with mortgages, medical bills, and families to feed.
The data tells the story of who really suffers during these political stunts. A 2019 Congressional Budget Office analysis found that the average federal worker lost $5,000 during the 35-day shutdown that year. For workers already living paycheck to paycheck—and federal employees are increasingly in this category as wages have stagnated—even a few weeks without pay means choosing between rent and groceries.
What’s particularly galling is how these shutdowns have become normalized political theater. Since 1976, there have been 22 funding gaps, with 10 resulting in actual shutdowns. Each time, working people pay the price while politicians score points with their base. The real cost isn’t just the immediate hardship—it’s the broader message that workers are expendable bargaining chips.
This selective protection also reveals class dynamics that corporate media rarely examines. Military personnel get emergency pay provisions because they have political constituencies that matter to both parties. But what about the EPA scientist monitoring water quality? The National Weather Service meteorologist tracking storms? The Social Security Administration worker processing disability claims for desperate families?
The shutdown game fundamentally represents the failure of our political system to prioritize working people over political theater. While Schumer and Trump trade barbs over healthcare and spending priorities, real families face real consequences. Federal employees report increased stress, relationship strain, and long-term financial damage from these recurring crises.
We need to end this madness entirely. Other developed nations don’t shut down their governments over budget disputes—they pass continuing resolutions automatically or maintain existing funding levels. The fact that we’ve normalized this dysfunction shows how far we’ve strayed from basic competent governance.
More fundamentally, these shutdowns expose the precarious nature of work in America. Whether you’re a federal employee, a contractor, or someone in the private sector whose job depends on government spending, your economic security hangs on the whims of politicians playing games with the nation’s credit card.
Instead of this selective compassion—pay the troops but not the food inspectors—we need comprehensive worker protections that guarantee no one loses their paycheck because politicians can’t do their jobs. We need automatic funding mechanisms that keep essential services running. And we need to recognize that all public service work has dignity and that all workers deserve economic security.
The real solution isn’t better shutdown theater—it’s building a government that actually works for working people instead of treating them as collateral damage in endless political battles.
Mr. Thompson raises important concerns about the broader impact of government shutdowns on federal workers, but his critique misses a fundamental distinction that matters greatly in how we structure emergency provisions during these crises.
Military personnel occupy a unique position under our constitutional framework—they cannot strike, cannot quit without severe legal consequences, and are bound by oath to serve regardless of political circumstances. This isn’t about political favoritism; it’s about recognizing that we’ve legally constrained service members’ options in ways that don’t apply to civilian federal employees. When we ask someone to forfeit basic labor rights in service to the nation, we bear a special obligation to ensure their compensation continues.
That said, the author correctly identifies the core problem: these recurring shutdown crises represent a failure of basic governance. No modern democracy should routinely use its civil service as leverage in budget negotiations. The solution isn’t to eliminate emergency military pay provisions, but to establish automatic continuing resolutions that maintain all essential government functions during appropriations disputes. Both military families and civilian federal workers deserve better than being treated as pawns in Washington’s recurring failures to govern responsibly.
We should be able to protect military pay and eliminate the broader dysfunction that threatens all federal workers’ livelihoods. These aren’t competing priorities—they’re complementary elements of competent governance.