State of the Union: In Defense of Government and its Employees

Government Executive: 10:16 p.m. That's a wrap. Final thoughts: This was, by the standards of recent history, a clarion call for activist government, and a strong defense of the people who work in it -- at least in the national security arena. And it included a direct acknowledgment that threatening to shut down the government every few months or hold the threat of across-the-board budget cuts over the heads of federal agencies and the people who work in them is, in the president's words, a "really bad idea." Even if it was an idea he dreamed up himself.

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