While the government shutdown is causing real hardship for federal employees and communities across the country, it is still preferable to passing a budget that continues our current path of austerity and the dismantling of vital public institutions, (“ Government shutdown begins as nation faces new period of uncertainty, ” Sept. 30).

Over the past nine months, the Trump administration has ruthlessly attacked federal workers and the public we serve by cutting essential programs that working families rely on. More than 200,000 federal employees have already been fired or driven out of public service , and by December, that number could reach 300,000 . That is one in eight federal workers. At the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, 90% of staff had been laid off

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