Political Quotes

“the Permanent Subcommittee for Investigations just finished a major research project. I happen to sit on that committee led by Rob Portman. He has done a phenomenal job of trying to pull all the information together to study government shutdowns. Government shutdowns are not new to us. We hear about them a lot lately, but in the last 40 years, we have had 21 government shutdowns-- 21. We have seen this issue over and over again; that when we get to a point of contention and argument, we end up shutting the government down to be able to resolve it. So the point of discussion is not just here in DC; it is all over the country. The question is, How does that really affect the country and how does that affect the U.S. Government? The basic study PSI did to go back and look at this was they found that the Federal workforce in the last shutdown lost 57,000 years of productivity, if you spread out all the Federal workers who were furloughed, the time they were furloughed, and the time that was lost. The total economy lost about $11 billion in productivity during that time period, and the Federal taxpayer lost right at $4 billion in lost money that is just gone. The cost of shutting the government down, the cost of reopening, the cost of pay during the furlough time periods when there weren't actually people there--$4 billion lost to the taxpayer.…”