WASHINGTON — The two-week-old US federal government shutdown may cost the country as much as $15 billion a week in lost output, a Treasury official said late on Wednesday, correcting an earlier statement by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that put the cost at up to $15 billion a day.

Bessent used the incorrect estimate in two separate appearances earlier on Wednesday, while urging Democrats to "be heroes" and side with Republicans to end it.

A Treasury official said the cost estimate was based on a report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Bessent told a news conference that the shutdown was starting to "cut into muscle" of the United States economy.

The wave of investment into the US economy, including into AI, is sustainable and is only getting started, but the federal government shutdown is increasingly an impediment, Bessent said.

"There is pent-up demand, but then President (Donald) Trump has unleashed this boom with his policies," Bessent said at a CNBC event held on the sidelines of International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings in Washington. "The only thing slowing us down here is this government shutdown."

Incentives in the Republican tax law and Trump's tariffs would keep the investment boom going and fuel continued growth, he said. "I think we can be in a period like the late 1800s when railroads came in, like the 1990s when we got the internet and office tech boom."

The government shutdown has ground into its third week, with Congress deadlocked in a clash over spending and Trump following through on his threats to take a hatchet to the workforce in response.

On Wednesday, a federal judge in California, Susan Illston, ordered Trump to pause the planned mass layoffs of federal workers after the White House said it expected to fire 10,000 workers.

Illston issued the temporary restraining order in San Francisco in response to a suit filed by labor unions saying that layoffs are illegal and "not ordinary".

Some employees also did not know they were being laid off because notices were sent to government email accounts that cannot be accessed during a shutdown, the seven-page order seen by Agence France-Presse said.

AGENCIES VIA XINHUA