President Trump signed a funding bill Wednesday to end the longest government shutdown in US history, hours after the House of Representatives passed legislation ending the 43-day standoff.
“It’s an honor now to sign this incredible bill and get our country working again,” Trump said in the Oval Office, flanked by House Republican leaders as well as business and union leaders.
The president blasted “extremist” Democrats for shutting down the government, accusing them of attempting to “extort American taxpayers.”
AP
“This cost the country $1.5 trillion,” Trump said of the shutdown, describing it as a “little excursion” that Democrats took “purely for political reasons.”
Trump re-upped his demand for Senate Republicans to “terminate” the filibuster — so that “this would never happen again” — and called for the “massive amount” of federal funding for Obamacare to be “paid directly to the people of our country, so that they can buy their own healthcare.”
In a 222-209 vote, the House voted to pass the funding bill it received from the Senate which will restart paychecks for federal workers and air traffic controllers, and fund food assistance programs.
The legislation finally “reopens the government, restores critical services, and puts an end to the needless hardship Democrats have inflicted on the country,” said GOP House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole of Oklahoma.
“We feel very relieved tonight,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters after the vote. “The Democrat shutdown is finally over thanks to House and Senate Republicans, who stood together to get the job done.”
Johnson slammed Democrats for using “the American people as leverage in this political game,” arguing that the outcome was “totally foreseeable.”
“It’s something that is very difficult to forgive,” he continued, describing the shutdown “stunt” as “utterly pointless and foolish.”
House Democrats lamented that their Senate Democratic colleagues caved with nothing to show for it on healthcare, their stated political reason for holding the government hostage.
“I rise in opposition to this bill that does nothing, not one thing to address the Republican health care crisis, amid a cost-of-living crisis,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) said in a floor speech ahead of the vote.
In his speech, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) proclaimed, “This fight is not over.”
“There are only two ways that this fight will end, Mr. Speaker: either Republicans finally decide to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits this year, or the American people will throw Republicans out of their jobs next year and end the speakership of Donald J. Trump once and for all,” the Democratic leader said.
The legislation will return federal workers to their jobs with backpay, reopen executive branch agencies that provide critical veterans services and other benefits like food stamps and fully fund the government until at least Jan. 30.
After that, some spending for SNAP benefits, veterans programs, legislative branch activities and military construction, among other items, will continue until Sept. 30 — at which point the 2026 fiscal year ends.
Hundreds of thousands of federal workers and congressional staffers had gone without pay for more than 40 days — leading the top union backing government employees to pressure Democrats into ending the shutdown.
There had also been increasing flight delays and cancellations due to the lack of staffing at air traffic control towers, as unpaid workers were not showing up to their jobs.
Last Friday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy had warned that if the government remained closed with the Thanksgiving holiday nearing, there could be an up to 20% reduction in US airspace.
“As of Sunday, nearly half of all domestic flights and US flights were either canceled or delayed. And it’s a very serious situation,” noted House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Monday, giving his chamber 36 hours to reconvene.
“Shutting down the government never produces anything,” Johnson added. “It never has.”
Six House Democrats voted for the funding measure in the House’s first legislative move since going into recess after Sept. 19.
Reps. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), Don Davis (D-NC), Adam Gray (D-Calif.), Jared Golden (D-Maine), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) and Tom Suozzi (D-NY) crossed party lines to vote with the majority.
Two Republicans, Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Greg Steube (R-Fla.), voted against the Senate-passed bill.
“I could not in good conscience support a resolution that creates a self-indulgent legal provision for certain senators to enrich themselves by suing the Justice Department using taxpayer dollars,” Steube said of his no vote on X, referring to a provision in the bill that allows Republican senators snooped on by former special counsel Jack Smith to seek compensation.
“There is no reason the House should have been forced to eat this garbage to end the Schumer Shutdown,” he added.
On Monday, eight members of the Senate Democratic caucus crossed the aisle to vote with the GOP for the end of the shutdown, though Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was not among them.
“I think he made a mistake in going too far,” Trump told Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” on Monday. “He thought he could break the Republicans, and the Republicans broke him.”
Before that, all but three from the Senate Democratic caucus had voted 14 times against reopening the government as they held out through last week’s Election Day to activate the progressive base and turnout Democratic voters in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York.
One of the senators who sided with the GOP, Angus King (I-Maine), admitted bluntly in an interview Monday, “Standing up to Trump didn’t work.”
A spokesperson for the Independent leader who caucuses with Democrats told The Post that Schumer and the other senators held out in the fight to secure an extension of ObamaCare tax subsidies, which will receive a vote before the end of the year.
