The Democratic refusal to agree to the $5.7 billion in funding that President Donald Trump requested for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border actually cost the American people many more billions than that — and for nothing.

Liberty Vittert, a statistician and member of the Royal Statistical Society, estimated in a commentary piece for Fox News that the money lost to the shutdown could have funded the border wall seven times over.

Vittert, a visiting assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis, wrote that some estimates for the daily cost of the shutdown range from $52 million to $360 million.

To break down the cost of the shutdown, Vittert first noted the cost of the furloughed federal workers, which she calculated to be about $4.3 billion.

This includes the money that the government workers didn’t receive during the shutdown and their resulting reduction in spending.

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Vittert noted that about 380,000 federal employees didn’t work during the shutdown through no fault of their own. However, from the government’s point of view, it means wasted resources.

According to Vittert’s report, the more significant cost is the shutdown’s disruption of the economy.

She cited a Standard & Poor’s report from 2017 that used data from previous shutdowns to estimate that a shutdown would cost the American economy $6.5 billion each week.

This figure doesn’t take into account federal workers’ missed paychecks, but it includes their decreased spending within the economy. It also calculates the trickle-down effects of the shutdown, such as lost business and revenue to private contractors, fewer trips due to national parks due to closures, and so on.

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Vittert estimated that the basic economic disruption during the shutdown cost about $32 billion.

She then added more than $5 billion on top of that to account for the loss of federal tax dollars on all that money that wasn’t being earned.

Another $1 billion was lost due to lack of services and funding provided by the government. This includes grant money the government provides to universities and organizations.

In conclusion, Vittert wrote that she estimated that the shutdown cost Americans a whopping $40 billion.

To put this in perspective, she estimated that this could pay for the border wall to be built and maintained for 40 years.

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The report definitely sheds light on on the absurdity of Democrats refusing $5.7 billion for border security.

Not only was so much money lost to the shutdown, but nothing was done to halt the tens of billions spent each year on illegal immigration costs.

The one thing Americans got out of this shutdown was how clearly it showed whose interests Democratic leaders like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer really have at heart — and it isn’t the American taxpayer’s.

After all, Democrats have been enthusiastic supporters of border walls in the past — before the 2016 election.

Now, they are more interested in obstructing Trump than they are in the good of the American people.

No one won in this shutdown. Not the American economy, and definitely not the Democrats.

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