Having been military, only working in joint environments with all services + federal civilians + DoD contractors ...

Government shutdowns do not save any money whatsoever! The civs get furloughed, and any holiday leave they have planned for next week will be cancelled as they are also not allowed to come to work* (and not allowed to take leave). Over the last decade+, the unpaid, unworked hours from those folks have all received full back pay for ... nothing!

Military members have to show up and often USAA and NFCU cover military pay to their AD members until a CR or funding bill passes.

Contractors in fully funded contracts will be there, ensuring the lights stay on - as long as the facility is declared essential, and there are some military members or essential/excepted gov employees to enact action/change/implement the products done by contractor employees ... but is this whole situation what people want as taxpayers?

*there will be some limited essential/excepted fed civs, ensuring the totality of operations aren't being run by contractors and semi-unpaid military members.

In my headcannon of funding government operations, the DoD should be fully funded and not subject to political whims for paying troops who are already pre-positionedon a global scale.

Alas, it does feel like military pay is kept in stasis to be used as a forcing function to get these CR or funding measures passed, as there would be less bipartisan political will to fund operations which are predominantly federal civilian dominated.