Well, I'm glad that some of you think this doesn't really effect many people's lives, that it's blown out of proportion, and that this is good because the government needs a trimming and government employees make too much money.
Let me tell you that this IS effecting lives, a lot of lives. If it isn't effecting yours, then congratulations. But at least have the decency to acknowledge that it's BAD for MANY employees. It's not only that one paycheck that you're maybe missing out on, employees who have secret clearances can easily have that revoked if money becomes an issue. Then they don't qualify for their job anymore... You catch my drift. This has happened to many of my husband's coworkers during the furlough. It's terrible. And now this. We can be grateful that we are in a stable financial position, I am working and we'll be okay. We have drastically reduced our spending and have saved money to be prepared for something like this... But not everybody can.
I also agree that, sure, there are lazy government workers, who just sit around... But to generalize liked that? Not cool. My husband works his butt off every single day. He gets hit up on his blackberry on weekends (and doesn't bill it), he rarely takes his whole lunch. The kicker? He'd make twice his salary in the private sector, easily. Probably even more. But he loves what he does, he's proud of what he does, and that's why he's staying.
And from what is can tell you without going into details is that this, and the previous furlough, have not saved any money. Where it gets cut on one end, it'll be replaced with twice as much.