In my opinion, it's not just the 800k of Federal Employees hurt. There's a lot of knock on effects that affect the rest of the country. Take me for example. I deliver pizzas. Some of the pizzas I deliver go to people with snap, or federal employees, or other affected individuals in various ways. If you are not getting paid, how are you going to buy a twenty dollar pizza for your family? And we have been so slow in my delivery area this last week as the shutdown stretches out. I had 7 runs on Monday, (Monday was a holiday so maybe all the business was in the daytime), 12 on Tuesday, 7 last night. That's incredibly slow for a closing driver.
CES