By Ana Marie Cox: Unless You're a Very Healthy Rich Person Who Lives in a Cave,

the Government Shutdown Affects You. Human puff-adder Bill Kristol drolly noted on Morning Joe this week that the shutdown is not "the end of the world". The Huffington Post's Sam Stein snapped back, "For these people affected by these cuts, it is sort of comparable to the end of the world." I have one quibble with Stein's otherwise satisfying smackdown: "For the people affected by these cuts" implies that there are people who are not affected by these cuts. Stein was talking specifically about the families and children across the country most likely to suffer when the government stops paying for Head Start programs and nutritional aid, but they are only the most sympathetic victims of the shutdown. And there are a lot of them: Almost 9m mothers and children rely on the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children. Most states will be able to operate
for about a week on the money they have, but in the words of one administrator in Cook County,"We have no cushion. If our funding stops we will temporarily suspend service." The US Department of Agriculture is attempting to prop up the program in the states hardest hit, they announced this week a $2.5 grant to Utah. But the $125m they have on reserve is laughably small for a program that costs $7b a year, its less than 2% of the total budget. If $125 was all the money the program had, it would operate for six days. But that's just women and children. The poorest of the poor, right? We're a civilized country, we won't let them starve. As Kristol told Stein, "Localities can help out. Churches can help out." Because obviously, up until now, localities and churches were just standing around twiddling their thumbs as lounged on divans and wondered if it was time to pick out new wallpaper or maybe treat themselves to a day at the spa. If you actually attend a church or do service work, I hope you've picked up the laptop from when you hurled it across the room just now. Already a huge patch in the patchwork of federal social services across the country, churches, and private food banks have stretched themselves thin to cover the drop in federal aid that accompanied the sequester cuts last spring (Remember that? The last time we had a budget showdown?) The ripple effects of a Wic crash spread outward quickly. Food stamp and Wic programs pump about $23m a year into retail grocery stores, indeed, a quarter of all meals for recipients of nutritional aid come from a supermarket. The Wic buys 60% of all the baby formula produced in the country. For every dollar spent on Wic, states save about $3.5 in Medical spending, but that's just a quantitative way of saying that Wic produces healthier babies. But maybe you're still thinking of this as a sad story, not that anything to do with you or anyone you know. You don't go to national parks, or live near one. Communities that depend on national park tourism stand to lose $30m a day. You'r not a veteran. At the VA, money allocated for disability payments and students studying under the GI bill will run out in a few weeks. You don't take commercial airplane flights. About 34% of the Federal Aviation Administration work force is now on leave, including almost 3,000 safety inspectors.