Getting Snowed

I’ve heard a lot of concern on the network news this week about the cost of shutting down the Federal Government due to weather. Since the early dismissal last Friday, the estimated tab has grown to over $450,000. Oh, wait…no…it’s 450 MILLION dollars. (Sorry, I got my numbers confused…450 thousand is what they spent on toilet paper for the third floor bathroom of the Senate office building).

So anyway, thousands of federal government workers stayed home for most of the week and our nation fell apart as a result. Roads crumbled, bridges fell, school buses ran out of gas stranding children in the desert…it was anarchy.

Or maybe not…

I have to ask, did you still have food? Did you lose power, phone reception, and television? Did the sky fall? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

What’s funny to me is that they’ve put a price tag on the Federal Government shutdown, as if we’re not paying that price day in and day out anyway. The number I would really like to see is what we might have saved. Here’s my theory: With the government basically stuck at home under a heavy blanket of snow, they couldn’t spend MORE MONEY.


That’s right, since the government doesn’t actually “produce” anything, but is in the primary business of “spending” our tax dollars; we probably SAVED a ton of money by those workers not going to the office. I think we should push for several days each month for them to stay at home. Give them a three day work week, but pay them for five. It will be a bargain.

Maybe within a year, we could balance the budget. In two years, we could afford National Health Care. By the third year, college tuition would be free for everyone. Finally, our government would be working for us.