You go ahead and tell that to the Social Security recipients whose money doesn't show up, or Pentagon contractors whose bills don't get paid, etc., etc.. Or people who get laid off in the second dip, after a few hundred thousand government workers get furloughed.
Tell them what? That the word "default" is not the correct word to apply to their situation, but instead they've been something closer to "laid off"? (I say "closer to" because historically they end up getting paid anyhow, just later; a hardship, yes, but "tell all the actively unemployed how much of a hardship that is".) They won't care, but I don't think it's for the reason you think.
I do not see how the fact that some people aren't going to be paid on time or possible at all requires us to apply the term "default" in a haphazard, nonstandard way. You don't "default" on a paycheck. It isn't a good thing, but it's something else.
