National Post (National Edition)
Shutdown to cost U.S. $1.2 billion each week
The U.S. economy will take a billion-dollar hit if the government shutdown continues until the weekend, experts have predicted as Donald Trump showed no sign of backing down.
Some 25 per cent of the federal government is without funding after the U.S. Congress and the president failed to approve a new spending package.
Standard & Poor’s, the credit rating firm, estimated the shutdown would shave US$1.2 billion off America’s gross domestic product every week.
The shutdown began at midnight on Friday and shows little sign of ending as the one-week mark approaches. The departments of Homeland Security, Justice and Transportation are among those impacted.
Some 800,000 government workers are affected. While some of them continue to work, many will not get paid until the shutdown ends, impacting cash flows for scores of Americans. So far, the public and federal workers have largely been spared inconvenience and hardship because government is closed on weekends and federal employees were excused from work on Christmas Eve and Christmas, a federal holiday.
Trump claimed that many of these workers “have said to me and communicated, ‘stay out until you get the funding for the wall.’ These federal workers want the wall. The only one that doesn’t want the wall are the Democrats.”
Trump didn’t say how he’s hearing from federal workers, excluding those he appointed to their jobs or who work with him in the White House. But some have taken to social media to post about how it is affecting them with the hashtag “#shutdownstories”, including voicing concerns over substantial bills that soon need paying.
At the heart of the shutdown, which sees affected government agencies and departments close their doors, is Donald Trump’s insistence on new funding for his U.s.-mexico border wall.
Trump has said that he will not approve any new spending bill, which first needs to be agreed by the U.S. Congress, unless it includes US$5 billion of border wall spending.
With the Democrats fiercely against the move and soon to take over the House of Representatives, a deal looks tricky. Trump doubled down on his demand on Christmas Day when asked when government would fully reopen.
“I can’t tell you when the government’s going to be open. I can tell you it’s not going to be open until we have a wall or fence, whatever they’d like to call it,” Trump said, referring to Democrats against the border wall.
“I’ll call it whatever they want, but it’s all the same thing,” he told reporters after a holiday video conference call with representatives from all five branches of the military stationed in Alaska, Bahrain, Guam and Qatar.