“From Covid shutdowns to government shutdowns, small businesses are pawns in Washington D.C’s game,” says Bruce De Torres, Director of Communications for the American Small Business League.
De Torres says the government shutdown is directly hurting small businesses, costing the U.S. economy roughly $7 to $9 billion per week, and every week it continues, that figure will grow.
Looking at the numbers, De Torres believes whenever the shutdown ends, billions will continue to be lost in the U.S. economy for weeks—maybe months— until everything catches back up. “Nothing justifies this. Everyone should tell Congress and the White House to solve this problem immediately,” he said.
Over the shutdown, airline unions along with numerous labor unions demanded Democrats sign a clean continuing resolution and now hundreds of tourism businesses have echoed these demands to reopen the government.
Analysis by the American Small Business League shows America’s travel economy has already lost more than $4 billion due to the shutdown, and those losses grow significantly with each passing day.
De Torres says finding bipartisanship in DC over the last several weeks is taking a back seat to political vengeance and taxpayer subsidies. And last Tuesday’s elections have now emboldened the extreme fringe, metastasizing this polarization found in the halls of Congress and the political landscape at large.
