Burbank Airport air traffic control tower unmanned for hours amid gov't shutdown (opens in new tab)

> 2) Healthcare funding is the least controversial thing to shut down the government for. This very article cites sick call-outs as a large contributing factor for the lack of tower personnel to begin with.

This isn't really the argument you think it is. The sick call-outs are not because they're actually sick (mostly, some may be). The sick call-outs are because:

1. Their annual leave requests are going to get denied.

2. Sick leave can't be denied for the first 3 days. In practice, self-certified "cough, cough, I'm sick" is accepted for the first few days. Past that, they could be required to produce medical forms certifying that they are, in fact, sick or injured.

3. Sick call-outs are a kind of strike, because federal employees will be fired if they go on an actual strike. So this is the only way they have to strike that doesn't guarantee they will be fired.

That said, I agree. Healthcare funding should be one of the least controversial things to shutdown a government over. But on your (1), the Republicans absolutely can open the government today. They can vote (so-called nuclear option) to change the rules and pass the bill with a simple majority instead of needing 60 votes.

1) basically it'll take 60% of senators to reopen the government OR a majority of senators being willing to go nuclear and rewrite the Senate's rules

2) Healthcare has been incredibly controversial in America for the last 15 years or so. Current Republicans are not a fan of Obamacare (honestly I'd suspect the name is at least half the reason) and want to shut down or expire as much of it as possible.

Now, you see... The issue here is that you're bringing logic across the pond.

The States is currently running sans logic and mostly on anger and emotion. So, no. ATCs are simply being lazy, or gaming the system, or are all secretly Democrats probably. /s