The nation felt the impacts of the shutdown Tuesday, after Congress was unable to come to a deal to keep the lights on. Left thousands without jobs, government building and state parks closed, and no real solution in sight. So how much does this cost?
$300 million a day, that will be coming out of the taxpayer’s pocket.
“Although $300 million per day sounds like a big number, it is only a couple of thousandths of a percent of the total GDP,” of about $16 trillion, said Paul Edelstein, director of financial economics at IHS.
It’s unclear what the impact will be on the economy for the long term. President Barack Obama has urged us that the longer the shutdown exists, the larger the toll on the economy. Basically, the main impact of a shutdown is the salaries of federal workers, if the workers aren’t being paid, that translates to less money to spend on consumer items within the economy. Hopefully, the workers will get back pay like they did in the last government shutdown 17 years ago, to help lighten the load.
On Tuesday, President Obama blamed the government shutdown on a “faction” of House Republicans.
“They’ve shut down the government over an ideological crusade to deny affordable health insurance to millions of Americans,” the president said. “In other words they demanded ransom just for doing their job.”
Ironic thing is, Congress is getting paid while government workers are sitting idly at home, broke.
Twitter, Facebook and other social mediums continue to rant using #DearCongress, which became the top trend nationwide on Tuesday.
Image via WikiCommons
