Yes, I know this makes me a jerk, but I'm gonna put it out there anyway:
It is apparently a given by everyone on all sides (and how rare is that???) that federal employees should be paid back wages for time not worked during the shut down. I understand the argument and mostly agree w/ it: It wasn't their fault, they suffered essentially unnecessary hardships while this bullshit got worked out, the issues being "debated" had nothing to do w/ them and they shouldn't be the ones to pay for the sins of many others.
But here's what I don't get: What's really happening here? Congress, including the most rabid anti-government, anti-spending, anti-bureaucracy, anti-welfare members, is simply going to give hundreds of thousands of people money for not working. That work and those work hours will never be made up. They're just gone forever. Congress is simply taking tens of millions of dollars of our money and giving it away to support their incompetence because they aren't willing to take the consequences of their actions (yeah, we shut down the government, but it's not like we're bad guys or anything). How does this happen? Why doesn't anybody care? And where's the tea party member who's gonna stand up and say "we shouldn't pay those folks because they do nothing anyway and having them not work was an improvement?" The very idea of it is laughable, totally out of the realm of possibility. These guys have no more principles, no more integrity and no more interest in saving taxpayers money than any liberal bogeyman you care to name. Oh, and btw, all these assholes stil got paid for absolutely totally fucking up for a month. THERE ARE NO CONSEQUENCES TO ANYTHING THESE MORONS DO. NONE. Not one of them could survive in the private economy they all claim to venerate. We the People just got fucked again. Surprise, surprise.
At the end of the day, no, it's not fair to make these workers suck it up and not get paid. I very much doubt that i would actually vote not to pay them if i were given a vote. So it's not the result that's the problem, it's how we got here and how this sort of thing is allowed to happen that's the problem. The real answer is that Congress ought to pay their wages.