Hello? Is anybody in there?

Talk about viral, it was all in the title "If government shuts down, so would troop pay", Rick Maze's Air Force Times article sent shivers down every military family's spine and prompted quick fingers with the forward button (mine included). After a deep breath to push away the anxiety, I tried to rationalize how anyone in the Department of Defense could actually defend the notion of freezing troop pay. Surely this was a joke. Are we seriously at the point where this is a plausible thought?

If we are to believe that this time it will be different, this time, not everyone in the military will be deemed 'essential' personnel, then one is left to debate the ability of the Powers That Be to safely distinguish 'non-exempt' from 'exempt'. I'd like to think that troops in Afghanistan would continue to receive their pay, but then again, I'd like to think that anyone who has volunteered to serve their country knowing they have also signed on to the 'I can't quit and find another job whenever I want' clause, would be exempt from any of the pettiness of Washington D.C. politics. I'd like to think.

I'm concerned that the opportunity to stamp a few MOSs with the 'non-exempt' stamp will prove too tempting. Way to go chaps, let's scare the paycheck to paycheck E-2 wife into apoplexy. Can I start telling her where to get her foodbox now? Oh, that's right, she already qualifies for it, even with her military husband's paycheck.

In the end, I can only hope that Mr. Maze's article was a preemptive strike, a bomb drop of words that would shake up a nation enough to demand that her leaders stop playing this game of chicken at the expense our economy's health and more importantly of our military families.