The cost of restarting the government is hard to tabulate. A study conducted by the OMB after the fiscal 1996 shutdown pegged the closing’s cost at $1.4 billion, or about $2 billion in today’s money. That figure didn’t include costs incurred when workers returned, though those expenses were termed “significant” by John Koskinen, deputy director of management at OMB during the previous shutdown, during a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Civil Service in December 1996.
Uncounted Costs
“Significant additional costs, that cannot be determined at this time, include interest payments to third parties” when the government doesn’t pay its bills on time, he said. “There will also be additional personnel costs necessary to deal with the backlog of work resulting from the shutdown.”
Those expenditures may be billions of dollars, said Charles Tiefer, a law professor at the University of Baltimore who has studied shutdowns.
While he is aware of no study that has calculated the cost of restarting the government, Tiefer said the biggest line items likely include the inability of agencies to carefully audit the huge backlog of payments including those to the IRS and Medicare claims. Others come from the difficulty of health and safety regulators such as the Environmental Protection Agency to pick up unresolved investigations, he said.
“When they resume their work, the trail will be cold, and the work lost,” Tiefer said in an interview. “That is by far the most costly.”
Technology Reliance
A reliance on information technology at U.S. agencies also poses pitfalls as workers return to their posts.
The federal government is more dependent on the Internet, operating huge networks that offer online services and mobile platforms that link employees, citizens and businesses directly to digital forms and applications.
Stan Collender, a former congressional appropriations aide, said the impact will range widely by agency.