The government shutdown is not only causing political disruption and paused paychecks for hundreds of thousands of workers, but it is also adding to the national debt.
It is paradoxical to think that the government shutting costs the federal government more than staying open, but that has historically been the case. The costs will rise with the length of the shutdown, which has been going on for 22 days.
For instance, in 2013, when the government shut down for 16 days, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget later concluded that the pause cost the government $2 billion.
Additionally, the bipartisan Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations surveyed 26 federal agencies and found that the last three government shutdowns cost taxpayers nearly $4 billion.
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The subcommittee report said that there was “at least $3.7 billion in back pay to furloughed federal workers, and at least $338 million in other costs associated with the shutdowns, including extra administrative work, lost revenue, and late fees on interest payments.”
Will McBride, vice president of federal tax policy at the Tax Foundation, emphasized to the Washington Examiner that shutdowns do not equate to any form of savings for the federal government or taxpayers.
“The pattern in the past has been certainly in these shutdowns that once the government does reopen, that money is ultimately not saved or permanently withheld from those workers, but rather there’s back pay,” he said.
However, the federal government also faces additional costs associated with these interruptions. After days of no work, there might be a big backlog of work, or it might cost more for an agency to restart certain programs or projects because of a protracted delay, which could increase costs.
McBride used the One Big Beautiful Bill Act as an example. That is the massive Republican policy and tax bill that passed over the summer and was signed into law by President Donald Trump in July. The federal government is working to implement that now.
“If they need to produce a bunch of regulations, for instance, that are being required as part of the rollout of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, that now cannot be done on time,” he said. “That has costs for the economy, but also it has costs for the federal government.”
One caveat is if there are big layoffs during the shutdown, during which employees are not asked to return or are cut through so-called “reduction in force” orders.
The government shutdown began on Oct. 1 when the Senate failed to pass a clean spending bill that Republicans pushed through the House.
The Senate needs a 60-vote majority of lawmakers to reopen the government, but Democrats have dug their heels in and are demanding the reinstatement of expiring Obamacare subsidies. They hope to use the opportunity as leverage to get concessions from the GOP.
The situation with the growing national debt has been concerning for some lawmakers in both parties.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that the federal budget deficit for fiscal 2025 was $1.8 trillion and that interest payments crossed $1 trillion for the first time, a grim milestone.
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The federal deficit is high by historical standards and indicates a long-run mismatch between spending and revenues that threatens the federal government’s fiscal health. At $1.8 trillion, the deficit is roughly 6% of GDP — a ratio that, before 2023, was never seen during peacetime, other than during the 2008 financial crisis and the onset of the pandemic.
Amid the current shutdown, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation anticipates the country’s total national debt will cross over the $38 trillion threshold this week for the first time in history.
