US President Donald Trump signed a bill ending the record-breaking 43-day government shutdown on Wednesday night after the legislation passed the House earlier in the day.
"With my signature, the federal government will now resume normal operations, and my administration, and our partners in Congress, will continue our work to lower the cost of living, restore public safety... and make America affordable again for all Americans," Trump said in a statement streamed by the White House, adding "it's an honor now to sign this incredible bill, and get our country working again."
Trump referred to the shutdown as "extortion by the Democrats," which cost the country 1.5 trillion dollars, and claimed that "the vast majority of democrats were happy for millions of Americans to suffer," but did thank the eight Democratic senators and the six Democratic representatives who crossed the aisle to vote in favor of the legislation.
Trump specified that this package was "just a continuation, and we'll talk later."
The bill contains a stopgap funding package to restart disrupted food assistance, pay hundreds of thousands of federal workers, and revive a hobbled air-traffic control system. This will extend funding through January 20, leaving the federal government on a path to keep adding about $1.8 trillion a year to its $38 trillion in debt.
While some federal workers will return to work as early as Thursday, it is unclear when full government services and operations will resume.
The Republican-controlled House passed the package by a vote of 222-209, with Trump's support largely keeping his party together in the face of vehement opposition from House Democrats, who are angry that a long standoff launched by their Senate colleagues failed to secure a deal to extend federal health insurance subsidies.
However, six House Democrats crossed the aisle to vote "Yes" on the bill along with almost all House Republicans.
This followed eight Senate Democrats also crossing the aisle on Monday.
'What’s happened now when rage is policy?'
"I feel like I just lived a Seinfeld episode. We just spent 40 days, and I still don’t know what the plotline was,” said Republican Representative David Schweikert of Arizona, referring to a popular 1990s US sitcom.
“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.”
He added: “What’s happened now when rage is policy?”
The shutdown's end offers some hope that services crucial to air travel in particular would have some time to recover, with the critical Thanksgiving holiday travel wave just two weeks away. Restoring 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 restoration in the coming days of the flow of data on the U.S. economy from key statistical agencies. 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 saying that employment and Consumer Price Index reports covering 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. However, most of that lost output is expected to be recouped in the months ahead.
The vote came less than a week after Democrats won high-profile elections in New Jersey, Virginia, and New York City that many thought 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.
Democratic Representative Mikie Sherrill, who last week was elected as New Jersey’s next governor, spoke against the funding bill in her last speech on the US House floor before resigning from Congress next week, encouraging her colleagues to stand up to Trump's administration.
“To my colleagues: do not let this body become a ceremonial red stamp from an administration that takes food away from children and rips away healthcare,” Sherrill said.
“To the country: stand strong. As we say in the Navy, don’t give up the ship.”
Despite the recriminations, neither party seems to have won over public opinion. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday found that 50% of Americans blamed Republicans, while 47% blamed Democrats.
Reopening the house also leads to vote on Epstein files
The vote came on the Republican-controlled House's first day in session since mid-September, a long recess intended to put pressure on Democrats in the shutdown standoff. The chamber's return also set the clock ticking on a vote to release all unclassified records related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, something Johnson and Trump have resisted up to now.
Johnson on Wednesday swore in Democrat Adelita Grijalva, who won a September special election to fill the Arizona seat of her late father, Raul Grijalva. She provided the final signature needed to force a House vote on the issue, hours after House Democrats released a new batch of Epstein documents.
That means that after performing its constitutionally mandated duty of keeping the government funded, the House could once again be consumed by a probe into Trump's former friend, whose life and 2019 death in prison have 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 of the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by Trump's supporters.
It retroactively makes it illegal in most cases to obtain a senator's phone data without disclosure and allows those whose records were obtained to sue the Justice Department for $500,000 in damages, along with attorneys' fees and other costs.