Woot! Woot! Woot! Comrade Stupid is tied for first place for shutting down the gubmint the longest, and tomorrow he takes the lead! Also, today is the first missed payday, so what was theoretical is now real: 800,000+ are unpaid (the + includes an unknown number of contractors who will never be repaid). Some 420,000 federal employees are working without pay, including the FBI, TSA and other federal law enforcement officers. Some staff at the State and Homeland Security departments are also working without pay.

So the advice for garage sales and knitting scarves still stands.

The House as promised passed a series of bills to open up individual departments of the gubmint, and they are dying on amply be-chinned Mitch McConnell’s desk. The Senate passed a stone, er, bill that legislated that shut-out federal employees would receive back pay when this shut-show is over, and it is a pretty safe bet that the House will pass it and it will go to Prznint Stupid. Will he sign it? Who knows!

Tiger Beat on the Potomac (Thanks Charlie!) says (emphasis mine):

“Estimates from President Donald Trump’s chief economist peg the cost to the overall U.S. economy at about $1.2 billion for each week the shutdown persists. While that’s just 0.05 percentage points off the GDP growth rate, it could be among the factors complicating the administration’s aspiration of reaching sustained 3 percent growth.”

So if we do the math… $3.6B Ameros so far. Well-done, Comrade!

Not to be out-down, Axios morning email thingie tells us (weird formatting is all theirs):

Shutdown fallout:

• “White House officials [are considering] diverting emergency aid from storm- and fire-ravaged Puerto Rico, Florida, Texas and California to build a border barrier, perhaps under an emergency declaration,” per the N.Y. Times.
• Cleanups at Superfund sites are suspended around the nation, “deepening the mistrust and resentment of surrounding residents who feel people in power long ago abandoned them.” (AP)
• “With more federal security screeners refusing to work without pay, Miami International Airport plans to cut off access to one of its terminals over the weekend … to send TSA workers to busier checkpoints.”(Miami Herald)

A reporter asked Prznint Stupid: “Does the buck stop with you over this shutdown?”

Prznint Stupid:

“The buck stops with everybody.”

crossposted from Mock Paper Scissors