Cost of Government Shutdown

pen Email to House Speaker Boehner:

Dear Speaker Boehner,
 We had a 16-day partial government shutdown in October promulgated by House Republicans. The reasons for the shutdown are not significant with respect to the context of this message.
 The White House and various other sources have said that the shutdown furloughed federal employees for a collective 6.6 man million workdays lost at a cost of $2.5 billion. An additional 100,000 contract employees were also out of work during that period.
 Notice that the claim of the Democrats is that the shutdown caused by Republicans has cost at least $2.5 billion and other sources have placed that cost at $24 billion, through a government readjustment of gross national product growth. The Republicans apparently have accepted that responsibility and criticism, which makes my blood boil.
 I call to your attention that our objective has been to reduce the size of government, save money in the process, and allow market forces with decreased federal restriction to grow the economy and obtain a decrease in unemployment. Simply put, the government is too large and too powerful, and we must cut it back.
 In the so-called cost of the 16-day government shutdown, the obtuse use of mathematics has been so flagrant, that it is sickening. While government employees on furlough did not work 6.6 million man-hours, they were later paid. If they had worked the 6.6 million man-hours, they also would have been paid. In other words, they were paid whether they worked or not and the salary budget was unaffected. It is it ridiculous to say that there was a loss of $2.5 billion. I personally would like to have seen them not paid for the work they didn't do, in which case, we could claim a saving of $2.5 billion for the 16-day shutdown.
 The problem is that Republicans seem to be equally inept at this simple mathematical problems, or else their propaganda machine is so poor that it is unable to counteract lies by the competition.
 However, it is not too late to put this in perspective with the American public. At present, it is likely that the public believes the Republican promulgated shutdown cost the taxpayers at least $2.6 billion, and nothing is further from the truth, as I have shown above. You may want to reanalyze your system of communicating with the public. How the public perceives you will be a key element in the next election. If you want to lose, continue to do what you have been doing and let the White House and Democrats confuse the public with its lies. If you want to win, completely reorganize your propaganda machine so that the public will have a clear understanding of what the facts are and particularly with respect to this issue that the 16 day government shutdown did not cost the taxpayers $2.5 billion and the fact that the government operated quite satisfactorily during the shutdown period without 6.6 million man-hours.