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DEAR EDITOR:
When Congress fails to fund the government (your government, the one you pay plentiful taxes to keep running) it's not just gridlock. It's a shameful collapse of responsibility. Federal employees across the country have been sent home without pay or ordered to keep working for free until elected officials remember how to govern.
These people are your neighbors. The people who run our federal prisons, inspect our food, maintain our parks, process Social Security and veterans' benefits and keep planes safely in the air. They're ordinary Americans doing essential work, and they have kids, mortgages, doctor bills and all the same things we all deal with. And they deserve better than to be collateral damage in yet another round of partisan theatre-of-the-absurd.
Politics was once the art of figuring things out; of finding a way forward in the best interests of the American people. Compromise used to be the beating heart of democracy. Now we get finger-pointing instead of problem-solving, slogans instead of solutions. And anyone who dares to break from the herd risks being branded a traitor to "the Party."
Meanwhile, the very people who caused this shutdown continue to collect their full pay. When I asked my Congressman, Michael Rulli, if he would forgo or defer his salary in solidarity with unpaid federal workers, his office sent a generic note about considering future legislation. Not a word for those working without pay to keep the country afloat.
I have the letter.
If our representatives can't manage the most basic duty of governing, keeping the lights on, they should at least have the decency to share the pain. And if they've forgotten that compromise isn't weakness but duty, maybe it's time voters remind them.
JOHN SHARTLE
Canfield