Even though on Thursday the House approved a short term funding bill that will avoid a government shutdown at the start of October, it still appears that playing games with the lives of the public and so many federal workers has become an almost certainty with Congress these days. This is evidenced by the other potential shutdown this year in March, and the actual furlough of workers of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for more than a week in July. With these constant shenanigans of Congress, it is no wonder that the public has a poor perception of the federal government. Unfortunately, what the public does not see is that members of Congress do not represent the entire federal workforce. There are federal employees outside of the law making legislative branch who actually are doing their jobs to keep the government running, even when Congress is not. Yet these hardworking public servants, whose pay and benefits aren’t as significant as members of Congress, seem to take the fall for the bad taste that Congress has left on the public.
Consider this, the majority of the federal workforce outside of Congress will be in the same boat as the public in the event of a shutdown, one group without government work, the other without government services. Yet Congress will still get paid while leaving the public it’s suppose to be helping and the majority of its coworkers out in the cold.
So, before you think about counting out the entire federal government as lazy and irresponsible for the work that Congress cannot accomplish right, think about the workers who are actually serving the public the way that they were hired to do. These often unrecognized and unthought-of jobs include, but are not limited to:
Keeping you safe from U. S. and overseas threats to your safety and land; Keeping your body full of safe food, water, and air; Keeping the products that you buy functioning safely; Keeping the air and land that you travel safe; Keeping every person, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, or disability free from discrimination; Keeping the mail that you send and receive secure and arriving to your home safely; Keeping the federal benefit and assistance programs for healthcare, housing, food, student aid, and childcare running smoothly; Keeping research going to find cures for a variety of diseases, including cancer, heart disease, and obesity; Keeping workers and job sites safe, while making sure that we are taken care of if we get injured on the job and are unable to work.