I'm not sure what more can be said about this partial government shutdown and how it impacts some government employees including TSA.

In my younger days I was enlisted Navy, married and making just about $200 a month. We lived paycheck to paycheck. After rent and food little was left over for a rainy day. So I understand what some of the 800,000 impacted federal employees are dealing with.

Maybe its a matter of scale but why is it that we are only hearing about specific groups of government employees (TSA, ATC primarily) making a lot of noise? TSA only represents about 6.5% of the federal employees impacted and best I can tell all the other impacted agencies are going to work to do their duty.

The actions of these employees calling out sick in this matter seems more harmful to TSA's image than helpful and will, in my opinion, further erode the TSA nameplate. I recognize that TSA's employees are caught between a rock and a hard place but they still have an obligation to report for their assigned duties. If an employee cannot meet their other obligations the correct course would be to resign and move on.