WASHINGTON — The known pricetag of the partial government shutdown has exploded to at least $4.4 billion, but the exact cost will likely be even higher when the dust settles. Recently proposed legislation hopes to figure out the dollar figure down to the last penny.
A new bill from Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) would order federal agencies to precisely measure the cost of the partial government shutdown on their operations once it ends, to give a comprehensive estimate of the funding lapse’s toll on taxpayers’ wallets.
“Schumer’s Shutdown Shenanigans have become quite costly for the American people,” Ernst told The Post.
“While we do not know the exact cost of Democrats’ political stunt, we do know that roughly 750,000 ‘non-essential’ federal employees will collectively receive about $400 million per workday of the shutdown in backpay.”
Wednesday marked the 11th workday of the partial shutdown, which means Uncle Sam will have to pony up roughly $4.4 billion to furloughed federal employees — and counting whenever the funding lapse ends.
Under Ernst’s Non-Essential Workers Transparency Act, federal agencies will have to calculate the number of federal workers furloughed, the sum of what they would’ve been paid if there wasn’t a shutdown and how much non-furloughed workers took in during the funding lapse.
Agencies will have 30 days from the shutdown’s conclusion to submit the data.
“As a bonus, my bill will help expose which parts of the bloated bureaucracy are truly non-essential and primed for the chopping block,” the Hawkeye State Republican added.
The government entered a partial shutdown on Oct. 1 after Congress deadlocked over funding when Republicans demanded a clean spending patch and Democrats insisted they get concessions on health care policy.
Already, the shutdown has become the fourth-longest in US history, hitting the 15-day marker on Wednesday with neither side showing any signs of blinking during the deadlock in Congress.
The prior government shutdown, which spanned a record 35 days from December 2018 to January 2019, delayed $18 billion worth of federal discretionary spending and slashed gross domestic product by $8 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
That period of time included multiple federal holidays, which meant that many “non-essential” government employees wouldn’t have been working for parts of the funding lapse anyways.
In a departure from prior government shutdowns, the Trump administration has been issuing reduction-in-force (RIF) notices to thousands of federal employees, meaning they will be permanently laid off.
However, a federal judge halted the move in a temporary restraining order Wednesday that the Trump administration appears likely to appeal.
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