Shutdown faces taxpayer reckoning as lawmaker works to expose ‘true cost of Democrats’ political stunt’

FIRST ON FOX: Republican Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst introduced a bill Wednesday that would require federal agencies to submit detailed reports outlining the true full costs of a government shutdown, including back pay for furloughed employees. 

“Schumer’s Shutdown shenanigans have already wasted $4.4 billion paying 750,000 ‘non-essential’ federal employees not to work for more than two weeks,” Ernst told Fox News Digital. 

“My Non-Essential Workers Transparency Act will expose the lost productivity and true cost of Democrats’ political stunt,” she said. “It will also help expose which parts of the bloated bureaucracy are truly ‘non-essential’ and should be put on the chopping block to increase efficiency in Washington for taxpayers.”

Ernst’s bill would require federal agencies to submit reports to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs within 30 days of a shutdown ending that detail the agency’s total number of employees on the day the shutdown began; total funds spent on salaries during the previous fiscal year; total number of employees furloughed during the shutdown; how much furloughed employees would have earned during the shutdown; the number of employees who were not furloughed during the shutdown and how much they earned. 

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The U.S. government has been in the midst of an ongoing shutdown since Oct. 1, when Senate lawmakers failed to pass funding legislation for 2026. An estimated 750,000 federal employees were furloughed and will be compensated with back pay once the shutdown ends, as stipulated in a 2019 law. 

As the shutdown loomed at the end of September, Ernst published Congressional Budget Office data showing the shutdown is expected to cost taxpayers $400 million a day, with the Iowa senator railing against the hefty price tag “to pay 750,000 non-essential bureaucrats NOT to work.”

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The estimated cost for back pay sits around $4.4 billion as of Wednesday. 

“Using information from the agencies’ contingency plans and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), CBO estimates that under a lapse in discretionary funding for fiscal year 2026 about 750,000 employees could be furloughed each day; the total daily cost of their compensation would be roughly $400 million,” a letter to Ernst from the Congressional Budget Office stated in September. 

‘SCHUMER SHUTDOWN’ ALREADY COST TAXPAYERS $1.2B IN PAY TO EMPLOYEES NOT WORKING

The Trump administration and Republicans have since pinned blame for the shutdown on Democrats, claiming they sought taxpayer-funded medical benefits for illegal immigrants. Democrats have denied they want to fund healthcare for illegal immigrants and instead have blamed Republicans for the shutdown.

“They say that undocumented people are going to get these credits,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said earlier in October. “That is absolutely false. That is one of the big lies that they tell.” 

White House spokesman Kush Desai slammed Democrats as “not serious people” when asked about the Congressional Budget Office data earlier in October. 

“Democrats are burning $400 million a day to pay federal workers not to work because they want to spend $200 billion on free health care for illegal aliens,” he told Fox News Digital. “These are not serious people.”

President Donald Trump warned the administration could make “irreversible” changes to the federal workforce in the lead-up to the shutdown, most notably through a new wave of fresh layoffs. The president repeatedly said that he and his allies did not want the government to shut down, but that it opened the door for some “good” that could come from it as he looks to further slim down the size of the government and make it more efficient.  

The White House announced on Friday that reduction in force notices, better known as RIFs, had been issued across agencies. 

“The RIFs have begun,” White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought wrote on X Friday.