Mark Strand was lucky, in a sense. He wasn’t among the estimated 800,000 federal workers furloughed in the first, five-day government shutdown of 1995, or among the 280,000 executive branch workers hit by the second, which lasted for 21 days.
Strand kept showing up to his job as chief of staff for Jim Talent, then a Republican congressman. But the atmosphere in the office was heavy.
“Everyone is sort of hanging around waiting for something to vote on,” recalled Strand, who spent more than two decades as an aide on Capitol Hill and later served as president of the nonprofit Congressional Institute.
