She described a cascade of “negative ramifications on a number of fronts” from closing the government Oct.1, from $500 million in lost local spending by visitors to closed national parks to $1.9 billion in delayed deliveries of 156 aircraft when the Federal Aviation Administration could not register them.
The Obama administration has said the shutdown and uncertainty over raising the government’s borrowing cap will curb fourth-quarter economic growth by 0.3 to 0.6 percentage points.
The budget office estimated in 1996 that the two shutdowns in late 1995 and early 1996, which lasted 26 days total, cost the government $1.4 billion, or roughly $2.1 billion in today’s dollars.
The analysis released Thursday was requested by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), who called the report “proof-positive that shutdown, slamdown politics is the wrong way to govern our country.”
“This manufactured crisis damaged the economy, cost us jobs and hurt middle class families,” Mikulski, chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a statement. “We now have the facts to prove it.”
Republicans, however, said the White House was using the dire claims of the shutdown’s cost to deflect the public’s attention from the issue that forced the showdown between the GOP and Democrats on Capitol Hill.
“We would have preferred to avoid the shutdown and any economic impact,” said Brendan Buck, spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner. “But this report is little more than a transparent attempt to change the subject from the epic and growing failures of Obamacare.”