“Well, we know at a minimum there are about $600 million of lost productivity, if you will, from at that point almost 400,000 civilians that we had on furlough for four days. There were a number of other costs where I can’t put a number on them. We built up interest payments because we were forced to pay vendors late. We had to cancel training classes, so we had to bring the people home on — on orders and then send them right back again. So there were a lot of costs of those sort”, said Undersecretary of Defense Robert Hale to a room full of stunned reporters – many with their mouths open in disbelief!
During a Pentagon news briefing held on October 18, 2013 the Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Undersecretary of Defense Robert Hale answered questions from reporters regarding the cost of the Republican led shutdown of government.
During one exchange with a reporter the Undersecretary of Defense put the figure at a staggering $600 million dollars – but that figure is probably much higher, officials admit:
“Question: I wonder if there is any estimate of what costs the Department of Defense incurred as a result of the shutdown, including the — you know, the workers at the beginning who were not working and that — that money was wasted. Is there any cost estimate?
UNDER SEC. HALE: Well, we know at a minimum there are about $600 million of lost productivity, if you will, from at that point almost 400,000 civilians that we had on furlough for four days. There were a number of other costs where I can’t put a number on them. We built up interest payments because we were forced to pay vendors late. We had to cancel training classes, so we had to bring the people home on — on orders and then send them right back again. So there were a lot of costs of those sort.
I can’t quantify those, but it’s at least the $600 million to start with in essentially lost productivity” (source: http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=5321).
Besides the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars, not including interest payments, the blow to morale of the troops and government employees was also very severe. And you simply can’t put a dollar figure on that at this time.