Overtaxed and unpaid air traffic controllers are resigning “every day” due to stress from the government shutdown.
“Controllers are resigning every day now because of the prolonged nature of the shutdown,” Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, told CNN.
“We hadn’t seen that before. And we’re also 400 controllers short—shorter than we were in the 2019 shutdown.”
Air traffic controllers are federal workers, which means they are part of the approximately 730,000 federal employees working without pay since the shutdown began on Oct. 1.
Leadership believes they would be unable to cobble together enough votes to pass a budget if there wasn’t the threat of a shutdown to hang over the Representatives.
Voters in the US tend to elect Representatives who are unwilling to compromise. Being obstructionist is rewarded with way better re-election chances than getting anything done. Voters want to see their candidate Stand Up To The Enemy, although they will accept passage of a Perfect Bill (as annointed by their media of choice). Passing a bill that is later deemed by their media of choice to have any small non-perfection gets them primaried and booted. So any candidate that doesn’t have extensive cover for passing a budget, that by its nature has to be a compromise, is replaced by a more obstructionist person.