Last week Donald Trump's very rich Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross poo-poo'd the struggles of those 800,000 federal employees who'd gone a month without pay, including those required to work in "essential" jobs like airport and border security. Does Trump see the irony there?

It also was air traffic controllers who keep planes from colliding in mid-air. Is their growing financial distress causing any job distractions? I'm not planning to fly anywhere. Are you? Then there's all our neighbors who work for the Forest Service or BLM.

Ross said they could just take out loans instead of lining up at food banks. About a day later, Congress and Himself managed to agree on a temporary solution, and the affected agencies were re-opened, at least for three weeks. Hopefully, all those workers have finally gotten their back pay. Will they have anything left after accumulated bills are paid, to last until the next paycheck?

My thought is they should get double pay for the financial and psychological damage they've suffered; and federal contractors and their employees should be paid for work they would have done if not for the shut-down. That still leaves businesses to deal with lost sales, especially in communities with a large share of federal workers.

With uncertainty still looming, those employees are likely to remain very tight with their spending.

Especially with Trump proclaiming that he'll do it again in a couple weeks (no matter the major harm we've already seen), or declare a "national emergency" and pay for his wall in some way that bypasses congressional approval.

The real national emergency is that evil Nancy Polosi won't let Himself get his way.

Carole McWilliams

Bayfield