The partial government shutdown cost the U.S. economy a permanent $3 billion loss, according to a new report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The five-week long shutdown cost the economy $11 billion in total, but some $8 billion of that will be recovered as the government reopens and workers receive back pay, according to the report. CBO looked at the economic cost of leaving 800,000 federal workers unpaid, reduced government spending on goods and services, and lower demand resulting from the shutdown. “Although most of the real GDP lost during the fourth quarter of 2018 and the first quarter of 2019 will eventually be recovered, CBO estimates that about $3 billion will not be,” CBO Director Keith Hall said Monday in a prepared statement. That amounts to a 0.2 percentage point drop in economic growth in the fourth quarter of 2018, followed by a 0.4 percentage point decline in growth during the first quarter of 2019.
BREAKING: The U.S. economy lost $3 billion because of the shutdown and will never make it up, @USCBO concludes.
Context: that's tiny part of GDP so does *not* affect longterm GDP growth.
But: it's half of what POTUS wanted, and did not get, for border barriers. And it's gone.
