WWNO skyline header graphic
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Local Newscast
Hear the latest from the WWNO/WRKF Newsroom.

Support local, independent journalism on WWNO with your Member Fest gift now! Click the donate button or Call 844-790-1094.

Budget Office Examines Cost Of Partial Government Shutdown

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Twitter may be worth billions of dollars. Let's talk about another number - $2 billion. That is how much federal employees were paid not to work during the government shutdown. It's just one of the eye-popping numbers in a new report about the shutdown from the White House Budget Office.

Here's NPR's Tamara Keith.

TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: The government was at least partially shut down for 16 days in October - national parks shuttered; non-essential government employees told to stay home. And while intuitively you might think shutting the government down would cut costs, in fact, it was very expensive.

The new report from the Office of Management and Budget is a first look at some of the costs.Added up, OMB director Sylvia Matthews Burwell says there were 6.6 million furlough days. Some employees were off the job for the entire shutdown; others were allowed to return to work temporarily.

SYLVIA MATTHEWS BURWELL: And at its peak, the number was about 850,000 people. And that would be about 40 percent of the entire civilian workforce.

KEITH: The work wasn't getting done, but as part of the deal to end the shutdown, all of these people were given back pay.

BURWELL: What that translates to is roughly $2 billion, in terms of the cost of lost productivity.

KEITH: Two hundred applications for oil-drilling permits sat around. The start of the Alaskan crab fishing season was delayed. Seven hundred small business administration loans weren't processed. The National Parks Service estimates it lost $7 million in revenue because entrance fees weren't collected. And it estimates neighboring businesses and communities lost an additional 500 million because tourists stayed away.

A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner says, quote, "We would have preferred to avoid the shutdown and the economic impact." But he also suggests the administration may be using the report to distract from the health care law's troubled rollout.

Tamara Keith, NPR News, the Capitol. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Tamara Keith has been a White House correspondent for NPR since 2014 and co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast, the top political news podcast in America. Keith has chronicled the Trump administration from day one, putting this unorthodox presidency in context for NPR listeners, from early morning tweets to executive orders and investigations. She covered the final two years of the Obama presidency, and during the 2016 presidential campaign she was assigned to cover Hillary Clinton. In 2018, Keith was elected to serve on the board of the White House Correspondents' Association.

👋 Looks like you could use more news. Sign up for our newsletters.

* indicates required
New Orleans Public Radio News
New Orleans Public Radio Info