Shut It All Down

Responsible as always, our boy Donnie egged on the Ultra MAGA nuts in Congress who want to defund the Federal government come Sunday. “If you don’t get what you want, Shut it all down!”

Spoken like someone who has never known someone living paycheck to paycheck, Donnie.

Among the Federal employees not receiving a paycheck next month are active-duty service personnel. Imagine working a 12 hour shift in a nuclear submarine off the coast of Russia and discovering that the rent check that your wife wrote bounced and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. But that’s OK. Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene got some great sound bites on Fox News. Imagine manning a machine gun in the Syrian desert and finding that your kid broke his arm playing football back home. The hospital won’t release him until the bill is paid, but your October direct deposit never came through to cover it. But that’s OK. Lauren Bobert got her impeachment investigation on Joe Biden.

Pay day is a really big deal in the Army. The PX literally puts out palettes of beer and baby formula and they are emptied before the day is done. It broke my heart to hear Army wives begging for a cash advance the week before pay day. “We have no formula for the baby. They are threatening to shut off power to our apartment.” Fortunately, we had Company Emergency Funds to handle that sort of thing.

The military does not pay well. A “buck sergeant” (E5) with more than 5 years service makes the princely sum of $3,200 per month. That’s about $20 per hour for a 40 hour week. Amazon warehouse workers make more than that and they don’t get shipped halfway around the world on a whim. A First Lieutenant (O2), with three years service like me, hauls in all of $4,700 per month nowadays. That $50 K per year is not exactly what your college pals are making on Wall Street.

Military personnel really need those paychecks, Donnie. Let’s shut it all down anyway.

By Ed Dufton