Trump signs deal to end the longest government shutdown in US history
President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed legislation ending the longest government shutdown in US history, hours after the House of Representatives voted to restart disrupted food aid, pay hundreds of thousands of federal workers and revive a teetering air traffic control system.
The Republican-controlled House passed the package by a vote of 222 to 209, with Trump’s support largely keeping his party united in the face of stiff opposition from House Democrats, angry that a long standoff waged by their colleagues in the Senate failed to reach a deal to expand federal health insurance subsidies.
Trump’s signing of the bill, which passed the Senate earlier this week, would bring back federal workers unemployed due to a 43-day shutdown starting Thursday, although how quickly government services and operations will resume remains unclear.
“We will never let this happen again,” Trump said in the Oval Office at a late-night signing ceremony that he used to criticize Democrats. “This is no way to run a country.”
The deal extends the funding through Jan. 30, putting the federal government on track to continue adding about $1.8 trillion a year to its $38 trillion debt.
“I feel like I’ve just lived through an episode of Seinfeld. We’ve just been through 40 days and I still don’t know what the plot is,” said Republican David Schweikert of Arizona, likening Congress’ handling of the government shutdown to the misadventures of a popular 1990s American sitcom.
“I really thought it would be like 48 hours: people would get their share, they would have time to rage, and we would get back to work.”
He added: “What happens now when anger becomes policy?”
The end of these shutdowns provides hope that essential services especially for air travel will have time to recover given that the critical Thanksgiving holiday travel surge is only two weeks away. Restoring food aid to millions of families could also free up room in household budgets for spending as the Christmas shopping season ramps up.
This also means a recovery in the flow of US economic data from major statistical agencies in the coming days. The absence of data has left investors, policymakers, and households largely in the dark about job market conditions, the rate of inflation, the pace of consumer spending, and overall economic growth.
However, some of the data gaps will likely be permanent, as the White House said employment reports and the Consumer Price Index covering October may never be released.
By many economists’ estimates, the shutdown has reduced more than a tenth of a percentage point of gross domestic product (GDP) in the roughly six weeks since the shutdown, although much of the lost output is expected to be regained in the coming months.
THERE ARE NO PROMISES IN HEALTH CARE
The vote came eight days after Democrats won several key elections that many party members said strengthened their chances of winning an extension of health insurance subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of this year.
Although the deal provides for a December vote on those subsidies in the Senate, House Speaker Mike Johnson made no such promise in the House.
Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill, who last week was elected New Jersey’s next governor, spoke out against the funding bill in her final speech to the U.S. House of Representatives before she resigns from Congress next week, encouraging her colleagues to oppose the Trump administration.
“To my colleagues: Don’t let this agency become the ceremonial red flag of an administration that takes food from children and rips away health care,” Sherrill said.
“To the nation: Stand firm. As we say in the Navy, don’t give up.”
THERE ARE NO CLEAR WINNERS FROM THE SHUTDOWN
Despite the accusations, neither side appears to have achieved a clear victory. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday found that 50% of Americans blamed Republicans for the government shutdown, while 47% blamed Democrats.
The vote came on the first day of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives since mid-September, a long recess intended to put pressure on Democrats. The chamber’s return also marks the ticking clock on a vote to release all unclassified records relating to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, something Johnson and Trump have until now rejected.
Johnson on Wednesday swore in Democrat Adelita Grijalva, who won a special election in September to fill her late father Raul Grijalva’s seat in Arizona. He provided the final signatures needed for a petition to force a House vote on the issue, hours after House Democrats released a new set of Epstein documents.
That means that, after carrying out its constitutionally mandated duty to safeguard government funding, the House could soon be preoccupied again with an investigation into Trump’s former friend whose life and death in prison in 2019 has spawned countless conspiracy theories.
The funding package would allow eight Republican senators to seek hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages for alleged privacy violations stemming from the federal investigation into the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters.
The law retroactively made it illegal in most cases to obtain senators’ phone records without disclosure and allowed those whose records were obtained to sue the Justice Department for $500,000 in damages, along with attorneys’ fees and other costs.
Source: Reuters
