"I said powerless to help you, not punish you." --Chief Wiggum Maybe ensuring that the economic hostages of a shutdown will actually suffer is an essential go

"I said powerless to help you, not punish you." --Chief Wiggum Maybe ensuring that the economic hostages of a shutdown will actually suffer is an essential government function? It wouldn't surprise me if there were a few people trespassing on closed national parklands right now, without incidents. And a few of them might even be furloughed employees.