October 20, 2025 • 10 mins
President Trump directed, and the federal government delivered payment to all 1.2 million active-duty military members last Wednesday. With the pre-planned protests on Saturday now behind us there’s an expectation that this could be the week where there’s movement to end the partial shutdown in D.C.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Have a question or topic you want to have addressed.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Just ask.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is the Brian Mud Show. Today's Q and A.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Who has been paid during the partial shutdown? What's the impact?
This brought to you by Melissa and Ashes. Check my collections.
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one
of these methods. You may email me Brian Mudd at
iHeartMedia dot com, hit me up on social at Brian Mudradio.
May also use the iHeart Radio talk back feature. We'd
love it if you'd show us some live Just go
into the app. Make us your number one pre set
(00:36):
and so. While you're in there, Brian Mudshow podcast number
two pre so would be awesome, and you'll see a
little microphone button as well. You tap it, you may
lay down the message right there, maybe even something for
a future Q and A just like this.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
You keep saying that the shutdown's not affecting anybody. It's
affecting my niece who just joined the army last year
as a second lieutenant out of ROGC in college. She's
not getting paid. My sister, who has been a teacher
on army basis for twenty five years, is not getting paid.
So it does affect people. Not as many, but.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
So okay, a couple things about this, and I appreciate
where this listener is coming from to text some upset there,
and there also are a couple of things that are
structurally not entirely correct with what I've said or what
I've positioned, but nevertheless, and also the specifics of this situation,
(01:37):
because I'm going to finish there with the status of
the two family members that are cited for this. I
received this note on Friday, and I understand. I understand
that there are plenty of people that are frustrated with me.
I've heard from federal employees that get frustrated with me.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
But I'm a person of principle and I always have been.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
I do not believe that the federal government as currently
constructed is sustainable. With thirty seven point six trillion dollars
in debt in counting, I think it has proven that
at some point we will not be able to sustain this,
And the question is whether we want a crisis or
whether we'd like to deal with it. I don't know,
kind of like we are now, and so I understand
(02:24):
that it's been provocative that I've been repeatedly asking the
question about whether any aspect of your life has been
impacted dude to the partial government shutdown, And that is
probably the first place to start. Is what I've been
doing is asking regularly, as we're in the twentieth day
of the partial government shutdown, whether you have had any
(02:46):
aspects of your life impacted.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
And it's a genuine question, Joel, have you any impact.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Not not any if it weren't.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
In the news, would you have any clue that it existed? No?
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Right, And I'm sure there of people that have no
clue that's right. Yes, yes, yes, and yes to all
of it. And by the way, that's the case with me,
So I can understand how my taking that position can
be misconstrued, because to be clear, I do firmly believe
(03:22):
that we need to dramatically reduce the sides of the
federal government.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
I am unapologetic in saying that.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
I do not wish harm for people, but at the
same time it needs to be smaller, which means many
fewer people working within it period. And it's not the
role of the taxpayers of this country to provide federal
government jobs for people.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
It is not.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
And the reason I think this is so instructive is
that it's not only as we are in the twentieth day,
the third longest partial government shut down in history. It's
actually the largest in terms of the scope of it.
Thirty four percent of the federal government is offul line.
Over a third of the entire federal government has been
for twenty days. Your typical shutdown, it's in the neighborhood
of twenty percent the government that's offline. And so here
(04:09):
we have the most pervasive and third longest in history.
And the situations just fine, It isn't it in terms of,
you know, day in and day out, this country operating.
And so this isn't to say that instances don't exist
where people do feel it, where they are impacted. For example,
(04:34):
people outside of the federal government. If you had plans
that it may be a specific national park. Not all
the national parks are offline, but some of them are.
If you are planning on taking a vacation and a
tour in DC, that type of thing.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
But the overarching point.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Where I mean, in other words, it's really at the
you know, on the periphery, it's at the margins.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
It's not part of the the everyday life. And that's
the thing.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
And I'm not putting it this way to be combative,
to be provocative for the sake of being provocative. It's
all to be instructive because, and this is what's empirical here.
The fact of the matter is that the average Flordian,
the average American living their daily life, has not been
impacted in any noticeable way by the shutdown. That is
(05:20):
just the way it is. And I will point out
that would appear to be the listener who submitted today's
note again, not you that's impacted. You're talking about a
couple of family members. But even to that again, I'm
going to come back around to that point because I'm
not sure the situation with them is as you presented it.
(05:40):
So my point for doing so, as I've spoken to
and as I mentioned on Friday, I said, I say
this without hesitation, the single best thing that could happen
right now in to this country is if we eliminated
thirty four percent of the federal government permanently and then
kept going, Because do you really think if we got
(06:01):
to forty percent the federal government you would notice it
at that point? And I mentioned that there was a
fun fact that if we actually did eliminate only twenty
nine percent of the federal government permanently, five percent less
than what is offline now, we would still put an
end to federal deficits. So, if you personally had to
(06:22):
vote to make that a reality right now, how would
you vote? Would you vote to keep the nearly two
trillion dollar budget deficits or to eliminate twenty nine percent
of the federal government that you've now realized doesn't have
any meaningful impact on your life, only your wallet if
you had that vote in Joel, how are you voting
on that the elimination? Yeah, I certainly am. And so
(06:46):
as my previous analysis has shown, if we were to
make the current partial government shut down permanent, reducing the
size of the federal government by thirty four percent, well shoot,
we'd go from having annual deficits about two trillion to
approximate annual surpluses of three hundred billion dollars.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Why wouldn't we do that? Why wouldn't we do that?
Speaker 2 (07:11):
I believe it's important to use this opportunity, this moment
where people see that we don't need all this government
as motivation. And so again it's not to slight federal
government employees. It's not for people that are having a
difficult time that are related to the federal government situation.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
It's about something much bigger than that. It's about the
future of this country.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
It's about the sustainability of this representative republic. It's far
more important than, you know, maintaining the status quo in Washington, DC.
And so I did say something on Friday preceding this note.
I went through everything I said and make sure that
didn't misspeak. What I said was this, and there's one
(07:54):
thing that could be slightly amended that I said. I
said today is the latest reminder that third four percent
the federal government is not doing what it usually does,
and with almost no exceptions, it doesn't matter to anyone
other than those who received the furloughs. So, again, as
I've consistently done, I have pointed out that, hey, if
you are a federal government worker, you're obviously impacted, right,
(08:20):
But that is but it's almost no exceptions outside.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Of that, right. But what I did point.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Out was the furloughed employee, not necessarily those who have
been working but may have now missed the payday. So
it is worth amendment amending that, And that's a good
point now on the note, because I was stated that
they're not being paid, that they're going to work and
they're not being paid these two family members, that is
not the case. It is important to note that under law,
(08:50):
under federal law, every single employee who has been reporting
to work will be paid.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
It's also important to note.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
That under federal law, even every furloughed federal government worker
who will end up going back to work is going
to end up getting paid for not having worked. So
that is really important in the context of this. The
question comes down to the timing of when that would be.
And so for many last Wednesday the fifteenth was a
typical payday that came without a paycheck that day, and
(09:18):
that most certainly does have a temporary impact on the
non furloughed employees as well, and that is worth noting. However,
when you're talking about the military, President Trump directed and
the federal government delivered payment to every single active duty
military member last Wednesday. Everybody was paid on schedule, all
(09:40):
one point two million. So as you're talking about family
members that, bas upon the way is presented, or are
involved in active duty military, they're paid, you might want
to check with them, you know, before making that assumption
that they're being negatively impacted by something that unless there
are other underlying circumstances, we're not explaining that note. It
(10:01):
just would not be the case of the add testation
that was made to me in the directing of this note.
So I go back and check with them. And as
for the shutdown itself, there, because we're past a whole
no King's nonsense on Saturday this week presents maybe a
window where there's going to.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Be movement on the partial shutdown DC. We shall see.
So Brian, now that we're past that, does that mean
we're going to have kings. I'm just checking. I'm asking
for
Have a question or topic you want to have addressed.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Just ask.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is the Brian Mud Show. Today's Q and A.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Who has been paid during the partial shutdown? What's the impact?
This brought to you by Melissa and Ashes. Check my collections.
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one
of these methods. You may email me Brian Mudd at
iHeartMedia dot com, hit me up on social at Brian Mudradio.
May also use the iHeart Radio talk back feature. We'd
love it if you'd show us some live Just go
into the app. Make us your number one pre set
(00:36):
and so. While you're in there, Brian Mudshow podcast number
two pre so would be awesome, and you'll see a
little microphone button as well. You tap it, you may
lay down the message right there, maybe even something for
a future Q and A just like this.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
You keep saying that the shutdown's not affecting anybody. It's
affecting my niece who just joined the army last year
as a second lieutenant out of ROGC in college. She's
not getting paid. My sister, who has been a teacher
on army basis for twenty five years, is not getting paid.
So it does affect people. Not as many, but.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
So okay, a couple things about this, and I appreciate
where this listener is coming from to text some upset there,
and there also are a couple of things that are
structurally not entirely correct with what I've said or what
I've positioned, but nevertheless, and also the specifics of this situation,
(01:37):
because I'm going to finish there with the status of
the two family members that are cited for this. I
received this note on Friday, and I understand. I understand
that there are plenty of people that are frustrated with me.
I've heard from federal employees that get frustrated with me.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
But I'm a person of principle and I always have been.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
I do not believe that the federal government as currently
constructed is sustainable. With thirty seven point six trillion dollars
in debt in counting, I think it has proven that
at some point we will not be able to sustain this,
And the question is whether we want a crisis or
whether we'd like to deal with it. I don't know,
kind of like we are now, and so I understand
(02:24):
that it's been provocative that I've been repeatedly asking the
question about whether any aspect of your life has been
impacted dude to the partial government shutdown, And that is
probably the first place to start. Is what I've been
doing is asking regularly, as we're in the twentieth day
of the partial government shutdown, whether you have had any
(02:46):
aspects of your life impacted.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
And it's a genuine question, Joel, have you any impact.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Not not any if it weren't.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
In the news, would you have any clue that it existed? No?
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Right, And I'm sure there of people that have no
clue that's right. Yes, yes, yes, and yes to all
of it. And by the way, that's the case with me,
So I can understand how my taking that position can
be misconstrued, because to be clear, I do firmly believe
(03:22):
that we need to dramatically reduce the sides of the
federal government.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
I am unapologetic in saying that.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
I do not wish harm for people, but at the
same time it needs to be smaller, which means many
fewer people working within it period. And it's not the
role of the taxpayers of this country to provide federal
government jobs for people.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
It is not.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
And the reason I think this is so instructive is
that it's not only as we are in the twentieth day,
the third longest partial government shut down in history. It's
actually the largest in terms of the scope of it.
Thirty four percent of the federal government is offul line.
Over a third of the entire federal government has been
for twenty days. Your typical shutdown, it's in the neighborhood
of twenty percent the government that's offline. And so here
(04:09):
we have the most pervasive and third longest in history.
And the situations just fine, It isn't it in terms of,
you know, day in and day out, this country operating.
And so this isn't to say that instances don't exist
where people do feel it, where they are impacted. For example,
(04:34):
people outside of the federal government. If you had plans
that it may be a specific national park. Not all
the national parks are offline, but some of them are.
If you are planning on taking a vacation and a
tour in DC, that type of thing.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
But the overarching point.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Where I mean, in other words, it's really at the
you know, on the periphery, it's at the margins.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
It's not part of the the everyday life. And that's
the thing.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
And I'm not putting it this way to be combative,
to be provocative for the sake of being provocative. It's
all to be instructive because, and this is what's empirical here.
The fact of the matter is that the average Flordian,
the average American living their daily life, has not been
impacted in any noticeable way by the shutdown. That is
(05:20):
just the way it is. And I will point out
that would appear to be the listener who submitted today's
note again, not you that's impacted. You're talking about a
couple of family members. But even to that again, I'm
going to come back around to that point because I'm
not sure the situation with them is as you presented it.
(05:40):
So my point for doing so, as I've spoken to
and as I mentioned on Friday, I said, I say
this without hesitation, the single best thing that could happen
right now in to this country is if we eliminated
thirty four percent of the federal government permanently and then
kept going, Because do you really think if we got
(06:01):
to forty percent the federal government you would notice it
at that point? And I mentioned that there was a
fun fact that if we actually did eliminate only twenty
nine percent of the federal government permanently, five percent less
than what is offline now, we would still put an
end to federal deficits. So, if you personally had to
(06:22):
vote to make that a reality right now, how would
you vote? Would you vote to keep the nearly two
trillion dollar budget deficits or to eliminate twenty nine percent
of the federal government that you've now realized doesn't have
any meaningful impact on your life, only your wallet if
you had that vote in Joel, how are you voting
on that the elimination? Yeah, I certainly am. And so
(06:46):
as my previous analysis has shown, if we were to
make the current partial government shut down permanent, reducing the
size of the federal government by thirty four percent, well shoot,
we'd go from having annual deficits about two trillion to
approximate annual surpluses of three hundred billion dollars.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Why wouldn't we do that? Why wouldn't we do that?
Speaker 2 (07:11):
I believe it's important to use this opportunity, this moment
where people see that we don't need all this government
as motivation. And so again it's not to slight federal
government employees. It's not for people that are having a
difficult time that are related to the federal government situation.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
It's about something much bigger than that. It's about the
future of this country.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
It's about the sustainability of this representative republic. It's far
more important than, you know, maintaining the status quo in Washington, DC.
And so I did say something on Friday preceding this note.
I went through everything I said and make sure that
didn't misspeak. What I said was this, and there's one
(07:54):
thing that could be slightly amended that I said. I
said today is the latest reminder that third four percent
the federal government is not doing what it usually does,
and with almost no exceptions, it doesn't matter to anyone
other than those who received the furloughs. So, again, as
I've consistently done, I have pointed out that, hey, if
you are a federal government worker, you're obviously impacted, right,
(08:20):
But that is but it's almost no exceptions outside.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Of that, right. But what I did point.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Out was the furloughed employee, not necessarily those who have
been working but may have now missed the payday. So
it is worth amendment amending that, And that's a good
point now on the note, because I was stated that
they're not being paid, that they're going to work and
they're not being paid these two family members, that is
not the case. It is important to note that under law,
(08:50):
under federal law, every single employee who has been reporting
to work will be paid.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
It's also important to note.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
That under federal law, even every furloughed federal government worker
who will end up going back to work is going
to end up getting paid for not having worked. So
that is really important in the context of this. The
question comes down to the timing of when that would be.
And so for many last Wednesday the fifteenth was a
typical payday that came without a paycheck that day, and
(09:18):
that most certainly does have a temporary impact on the
non furloughed employees as well, and that is worth noting. However,
when you're talking about the military, President Trump directed and
the federal government delivered payment to every single active duty
military member last Wednesday. Everybody was paid on schedule, all
(09:40):
one point two million. So as you're talking about family
members that, bas upon the way is presented, or are
involved in active duty military, they're paid, you might want
to check with them, you know, before making that assumption
that they're being negatively impacted by something that unless there
are other underlying circumstances, we're not explaining that note. It
(10:01):
just would not be the case of the add testation
that was made to me in the directing of this note.
So I go back and check with them. And as
for the shutdown itself, there, because we're past a whole
no King's nonsense on Saturday this week presents maybe a
window where there's going to.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Be movement on the partial shutdown DC. We shall see.
So Brian, now that we're past that, does that mean
we're going to have kings. I'm just checking. I'm asking
for
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