The government has had a hard time as it is to keep positions filled as they are competing with better pay in the private sector. Who would ever want to work for the government if whether or not you're getting paid is constantly up in the air.
Instead of using government workers keeping intact our very thin veneer between civilization and barbarity as bargaining chips at best and hostages at worst, the pain would fall squarely on the President and Congress.
https://bigthink.com/news/heres-how-much-senators-and-congre...
That's a terrible idea. Not all lawmakers are independently wealthy. So the ones who actually need that salary to survive can effectively be told by the President or party leaders -- of either party -- "vote with us, or we have a shutdown and your family starves."
Government "service" is just a job, and these people take a pay cut in exchange for job security (and in the cases I'm personally familiar with, fantastic health insurance).
The shutdown is nonsensical, expensive, and a pointless hardship for everyone affected, but there's no need to elevate government employees to sainthood.
My partner is a "civil servant" and I see on a weekly basis how she is consistently overworked and undervalued. But she has a mission to improve our city's infrastructure for cyclists and pedestrians, and you just can't do that effectively as an engineer outside of the public sector.
In fact if there's not already a gist of impacts from the government shutdown there should be one.
I do agree that they may be intentionally reducing the attractiveness of government jobs and decreasing the quality of government programs in an effort to shift more wealth to their already wealthy private sector buddies.
Many Republicans actually love the idea of less regulation, so a government shutdown is great!