This is a post from my fellow Presidential Innovation Fellow Robert Read. His post the other morning on his Facebook stream really moved me. I thought it summed up this whole mess very well and wanted to share it with you!
I'm lucky. I'm furloughed, but my kid's education doesn't depend on it. I don't live month to month. I'm not at the beginning of my career, and I'm not a single parent. I took a cut in salary and left my family to go to Washington to answer the President's call to try to make government "cool" and efficient, and I work 70 hours a week to do it. I was handed a plum of a project which possibly will save the government a billion dollars in 2014, but the government just cost us all that and more.
We are now like a runner forced to stop mid-stride for one minute and then allowed to run for one minute---we expend more effort and cover less distance than running at a smooth pace. The cost of the shutdown, even if it is reversed tonight, has already been at least a billion, by my own humble reckoning. That assumes of course that you believe and that we have become a great nation because of good government, not in spite of bad government.
As duty demands, I'm going into work now to shut down the servers that host the Beta site for my project. It is the first day I haven't worn a tie in 4 months. One must always look on the bright side.
After I shut down my servers, I have to leave and am forbidden to do any work for the government as long as the shutdown lasts.
