White House Puts Price on Government Shutdown WASHINGTON - Lost work: 6.6 million days. Back-pay costs: $2 billion. Private-sector jobs lost: 120,000. Those are just some of the costs of the 16-day partial government shutdown that ended last month, the Obama administration said in a detailed report released Thursday. The effects may seem small in the context of the $16 trillion economy, but they can add up to less effective government service, and at a higher cost. The report comes as a second shutdown remains a possibility unless Congress can pass a budget or provide more stopgap financing for the government. But top Republicans, wary since the backlash to the October shutdown, have made it clear they do not intend to force another impasse. A bipartisan House-Senate negotiating committee is working behind closed doors on a budget agreement, but expectations for a major deal are low, given the expansive policy gulf between Democrats and Republicans. The committee has a mid-December deadline, and the government's financing expires again in January. The Treasury would lose the authority to issue new net debt in February. "This manufactured crisis damaged the economy, cost us jobs and hurt middle-class families," said Senator Barbara Mikulski, the Maryland Democrat who is chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. The American people deserve a government that works as hard as they do. It's time to hear from the middle-of-roaders. It's time to work together on a bipartisan basis. The most direct cost, the report said, is the $2 billion in back pay that will go to federal workers who were furloughed. Government agencies - from the sprawling State Department to the tiny Export-Import Bank - were ordered to send nonessential workers home, resulting in about 40 percent of civilian federal employees going off the clock. That included four out of the five Nobel laureates who are researchers for the government, the report said. All in all, the shutdown led to 6.6 million days of lost work, paid for by the taxpayer. Many federal contractors also furloughed employees during the shutdown, and those workers may not receive back pay. Other direct costs come from missed fees from national parks, interest due on late payments, the curtailing of tax enforcement actions and certain stop-work orders. "Millions of Americans were impacted by the shutdown, due to furloughs of federal employees, reduced services for the public and delays in payments to federal grantees, states, localities, contractors and individuals," Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the budget director, said in the report. On top of that, the economy is absorbing costs from delays and disruptions to government services, and from a sharp blow to consumer and business confidence. The report runs through a long list of the disruptions: a backlog in veterans" disability claims, children left out of Head Start, patients left out of cancer studies, halted consumer-safety work, delays in certain tax refunds. The report said that the government had not calculated the costs of actually shutting the government down and reopening it. But it described them as significant. "Disruptions at nuclear cleanup sites associated with the shutdown will cost two to three weeks of productivity," it said. The shutdown "may cause the Department of Energy to miss cleanup milestones agreed to with the states where cleanup is underway." Ultimately, disruptions like the shutdown may discourage workers from taking government jobs, analysts have said. "The furloughs came on top of an unprecedented three-year pay freeze, increases to retirement contributions and the loss of six days" wages due to the sequestration-related furloughs this summer," the American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing about 650,000 government workers, said in a statement. Employees are frustrated at being made the sacrificial lamb of deficit reduction, and as a result the federal government is becoming a less attractive employer.