system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
I think that the government shutdown in America is a good thing, showing how extraneous much of the government really is and how much of it can be cut or reorganized to be less cost inefficient. CMV

With the recent government shutdown there have been a lot of people who've been put on furlough and a lot of programs that have been slowed or shut down entirely. One statistic that particularly jumps out at me is that 93% of EPA employees have been labelled as non-essential. Now don't get me wrong, I think we should have the EPA and be looking for ways to be more clean and energy efficient. At the same time, however, I don't see the need for the size of these branches. 

On the flip side of the coin some branches of the bureaucracy need to be restructured. For example, the NSA had a large group of people labelled non-essential. I think that we do need some sort of counterintelligence gathering from them (Though not necessarily with the methods they have chosen to employ as of late) but that it needs to be restructured because if a large percentage of their employees are seen as non-essential than there needs to be more essential jobs for them to do. Put them to work doing things that get them "essential" status. The way I see it, if we can re-structure, cut and re-organize parts of the government that have been effected thus far we can effectively help prevent such a thing from happening. 

**TL;DR** The government shutdown is giving us an opportunity to restructure to where we're not spending as much money because of twisted bureaucracy and bloated non-essential programs.
gpt
Non-Essential in this context simply means that they are not required for the short term survival and security of the nation. It absolutely does not mean that there would be no long term negatives if they were completely eliminated.

Could the size of the government be reduced without any negative impact or eliminating programs, perhaps slightly. But like it or not, bureaucracy is pretty much unavoidable for any organization the size of the government.