Cost of shutdown on the rise
The White House admitted yesterday that the US government shutdown was costing the economy twice as much as thought, while the Democrats pushed for a delay in President Trump’s State of the Union address.
Almost 50,000 employees were ordered back to work unpaid to relieve backlogs and shortages by preparing tax returns, running air traffic control systems and inspecting food.
The shutdown, which was triggered by Trump’s demands for a southern border wall, has denied funding to a quarter of government functions. Federal courts said they only had enough cash to run for another week. The
50,000 workers will join the
420,000 essential federal employees who have been required to show up and work unpaid since the shutdown began.
Standard and Poor’s, the ratings agency, said that if the shutdown continued until the end of next week then the economy would have lost about US$5.7 billion (NZ$8.4b) – the amount of money that the president wants for the barrier.
New polling showed that Trump’s efforts to blame Democrats for the shutdown were failing, with 54 per cent of Americans holding the president responsible, compared with 31 per cent blaming Democrats in Congress and 5 per cent Republicans in Congress, according to Marist Poll for PBS Newshour. The blame attached to Trump was higher than the 47 per cent found by a poll for Politico last week.
America’s longest government shutdown completed its 26th day yesterday with 800,000 federal employees left unpaid and an estimated more than 100,000 contractors unlikely to receive earnings for lost work.
Departments including agriculture and homeland security, which employs border patrol agents and secret service agents, and agencies as varied as the National Park Service and Nasa have not been awarded annual funding after Democrats rejected Trump’s demand for a border wall to be included in the legislation.
Kevin Hassett, chairman of the White House council of economic advisers, said that growth was slowing by about 0.1 per centage points a week, double his previous estimate. With the shutdown in its fourth week, this suggested that the economy had lost almost a half-per centage point of growth.
‘‘We have found the damage is a little bit worse because of government contractors, something that was excluded from our first analysis,’’ Hassett told Fox News.
‘‘There’s a lot of pain. At CEA [the council of economic advisers] none of our staff are being paid ... one staffer told me over the weekend that she’s starting to drive an Uber to help make ends meet.’’
Hassett said that the economy should get a boost when the government reopened.
Nancy Pelosi, who as Speaker has invited the president to deliver the annual State of the Union address on January 29, wrote a letter yesterday ) to Trump suggesting that he delay the address until the shutdown was over or present it in writing, citing security issues.
‘‘Sadly, given the security concerns and unless government reopens this week, I suggest that we work together to determine another suitable date after government has reopened for this address,’’ Pelosi wrote.
The address is normally an opportunity for presidents to tout their achievements and lay out their policy vision to the American Kevin Hassett, White House council of economic advisers people and the demand from Pelosi showed some of the leverage that Democrats felt they had over Mr Trump in the negotiations.
A bipartisan group of senators were drafting a letter to the White House yesterday urging Trump to back down on his promise not to sign any budget bills without funding for his wall, allowing government to reopen temporarily.
‘‘We respectfully request that you join us in supporting a shortterm continuing resolution of three weeks to give Congress time to develop and vote on a bipartisan agreement that addresses your request,’’ wrote the group, led by the Republican Lindsey Graham and the Democrat Chris Coons.
They want Trump to reopen government for three weeks to allow workers to be paid and for intense negotiations on a border protection deal. – The Times
‘‘We have found the damage is a little bit worse because of government contractors, something that was excluded from our first analysis. There’s a lot of pain.