“U.S. Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Tom Carper (D-DE), the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), today unveiled a new bipartisan report that documents the cost to American taxpayers of the last three government shutdowns and the impacts they had on the economy and core government functions.  The largest direct cost of these shutdowns is lost productivity, work not performed by furloughed federal employees.  Over the past five years, the federal government has been fully or partially shut down for 52 days, costing taxpayers nearly $4 billion—$3.7 billion in back pay to federal workers who were furloughed and prohibited from going to work, and at least $338 million in other costs associated with the shutdowns, including extra administrative work, lost revenue, and late fees on interest payments.  Moreover, the total amount of combined employee furlough days represents an estimated 56,938 years of lost productivity…”