My name is Sam S. Spade (Yes - Really) and I work for The FHA Condos Approval Company, Inc. As the name implies we facilitate FHA and VA approvals for Condominium Communities. We work for the condos and not the government. However we have to count on HUD, due to government decree, to do their job and consequently this allows us to do ours. Condominium approvals are the only thing that we do.

The Government shutdown may not be hurting you but the company I work for has not brought in any new revenue since the shutdown started 2 weeks ago as the HUD inspectors are not on the job. Actually the lack of new money coming in goes back closer to 3 weeks. The HUD inspectors, which we have to rely on for certifying condominiums complexes for the FHA, seemed to have stopped working about a week before the shutdown started on October 1, 2013.

While the company that employs me has adequate reserves to weather this debacle not all companies in this business do. I know of a couple of them that, if this goes on much longer, will have to shut their doors and I am sure that there are many more out there that I don't know about.

Our company is small - only 5 people. There are many small companies that rely on the government in many lines of work that are being really being hurt by this unnecessary shutdown. When you multiply the 5 of us by all these companies the numbers are huge and the harm being done is very real.

The government employees that are missing work over the shutdown will somehow magically recoup their lost wages even though most of them are covered under a law that basically says "No Work Done - No Pay Collected".

The members of Congress, the President and Vice President of course are getting paid their regular salary. In fact their private gym, paid for with taxpayer's money, is still open and running but the Statue of Liberty was closed.

I bring all of this up to make a point about how we elect the people that are supposed to represent our, the voters, interests and goals. We are not doing a very good job of choosing our "Leaders" (sic).

According to MSNBC as of 10/9/13, only 5% of the voters thought that congress was doing a good job. (This makes me wonder what this 5% is thinking but that's another story.) In fact MSNBC found that Congress was "less popular than dog poop, more so than Miley Cyrus, twerking".

The problem that arises with the voting public is that while they think that congress stinks it is only everybody else's elected officials that stink and not their own. https://trbsystem-us.org/As proof of this about 90% of all incumbents will be re-elected in the upcoming election. Let's think about this. If 95% of the voting public thinks congress is doing a terrible job than chances are your elected representative is in this bunch.