US President, Donald Trump had signed legislation ending the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, hours after the House of Representatives voted to restart disrupted food assistance, pay hundreds of thousands of federal workers, and revive a hobbled air-traffic control system.
The Republican-controlled chamber passed the package by a vote of 222-209. Trump’s support largely kept his party united despite strong opposition from House Democrats, who were angered that a lengthy standoff—initiated by their Senate colleagues—failed to secure a deal to extend federal health insurance subsidies.
Trump’s signature on the bill, which cleared the Senate earlier in the week, will allow federal workers idled by the 43-day shutdown to return to their jobs as early as Thursday.
However, the exact speed at which full government services and operations will resume remains uncertain.
“We can never let this happen again,” Trump said in the Oval Office during a late-night signing ceremony he used to criticize Democrats. “This is no way to run a country.”
The deal extends funding through January 30, meaning the federal government is set to continue adding roughly $1.8 trillion a year to its $38 trillion in debt.
Republican Representative David Schweikert likened Congress’s handling of the situation to a popular 1990s U.S. sitcom: “I feel like I just lived a Seinfeld episode. We just spent 40 days and I still don’t know what the plotline was.”
He added: “I really thought this would be like 48 hours: people will have their piece, they’ll get a moment to have a temper tantrum, and we’ll get back to work… What’s happened now when rage is policy?”
The end of the shutdown offers hope that services crucial to air travel will recover in time for the critical Thanksgiving holiday travel wave, which is just two weeks away. The restoration of food aid to millions of families may also free up household budgets for spending as the Christmas shopping season moves into high gear.
It also means the flow of data on the U.S. economy from key statistical agencies will be restored in the coming days. The absence of data had left investors, policymakers, and households largely in the dark about the health of the job market, the trajectory of inflation, and the pace of consumer spending and economic growth overall.
Some data gaps are likely to be permanent, however, with the White House stating that employment and Consumer Price Index reports covering the month of October might never be released.
By many economists’ estimates, the shutdown was shaving more than a tenth of a percentage point from gross domestic product over each of the roughly six weeks of the outage, though most of that lost output is expected to be recouped in the months ahead.
The vote came eight days after Democrats won several high-profile elections, which many in the party believed strengthened their odds of winning an extension of health insurance subsidies due to expire at the end of the year.
While the deal sets up a December vote on those subsidies in the Senate, Speaker Mike Johnson has made no such promise in the House.
Despite the recriminations, neither party appears to have won a clear victory. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday found that 50% of Americans blamed Republicans for the shutdown, while 47% blamed Democrats.
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