The shutdown temporarily costs money since the leeches working for the government which itself produces NOTHING aren't leeching at the moment. Money isn't getting printed or borrowed to artificially boost the economy and the current house of cards set up by all the huge debt accumululation.

Theoretically they should get real jobs in the private sector producing real wealth. Unfortunately there needs to be some serious economic correction to get rid of all the crap currently in the system before things would start to really improve. But cutting the government down to size is absolutely essential for this to even begin to happen.