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Government shutdown didn't end without repercussions Article courtesy of "Credit Card Builders" Premium Newsletter. The government shutdown has ended – at least for the moment. But the first shutdown since 1995 did take a toll on the country. Of course, the shutdown occurred because House Republicans were insistent that new spending bills include language that damaged or eliminated Obamacare; while Democrats were just as insistent it remained intact. Most people only think about the billions of dollars that were lost, such as the estimated $24 billion in lost economic output; and $450,000 per day in revenues lost at National Parks. But there were other things that went basically unseen. For example, the job reports didn’t come out on time due to delays caused as a direct result of the shutdown. Additionally, the folks who usually inspect eggs and fresh berries (and just about anything else you could put on a plate outside of red meat) were on furlough. Additionally, the FDA skipped untold numbers of inspections at dairies, processing plants and other food companies; what’s more, the FDA couldn’t do many follow-up inspections to ensure problems they’d already found were fixed. Why? Nearly 1,000 of their 1,602 inspectors were furloughed! Worse yet, the federal Center for Disease Control and Prevention (located in Georgia) sent 9,000 of their 13,000 workers home, which meant they couldn’t give their best effort to curbing the salmonella outbreak in chicken that reached 18 states. That’s bad enough – but that’s just one area that suffered. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission wasn’t running, so discrimination cases weren’t making it into court. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration wasn’t doing business, so untrained employees could operate dangerous equipment. Children and adults wishing to use government sites such as NASA or the Census Bureau discovered these sites were not available due to the shutdown. Doctors could not apply for federal funded research grants to find cures for diseases, which may set their research back by as much as a year. Even the FCC was closed, so our country’s citizens couldn’t call to complain about a radio, television or Internet broadcast that offended them. But just because the shutdown has ended, don’t forget that this is just a temporary fix. The 16-day shutdown ended with a deal that raises the debt ceiling and allows current spending levels to remain the same through January 15, 2014. However, with Republicans saying they’ll “do anything” to derail the health care laws put in place by President Obama, there may be another one just around the corner.