“The whole exercise was pointless. It was wrong and it was cruel.”
The package funds military construction, veterans’ affairs, the Department of Agriculture and Congress itself to the end of September 2026, and the rest of Government through the end of January.
About 670,000 furloughed civil servants will report back to work, and a similar number who were kept at their posts with no compensation – including more than 60,000 air traffic controllers and airport security staff – will get back-pay.
The deal restores federal workers fired by Trump as a result of the shutdown, and air travel that has been disrupted across the country will also gradually return to normal.
The White House said the President planned to sign the bill in an Oval Office ceremony at 9.45pm local time (3.45pm Thursday NZT).
Trump himself had little to say on the vote, although he took to social media to falsely accuse Democrats of having “cost our country US$1.5 trillion [$2.7t] ... with their recent antics of viciously closing our country”.
The full financial toll of the shutdown has yet to be determined, although the Congressional Budget Office estimates it has caused US$14 billion in lost growth.
‘Not backing away’
Johnson and his Republicans had almost no room for error as their majority is down to two votes.
Democratic leadership – furious over what they regard as their Senate colleagues folding – had urged members to vote no and all but a handful held the line.
Although polling showed the public mostly on Democrats’ side throughout the standoff, Republicans are widely seen as having done better from its conclusion.
For more than five weeks, Democrats held firm on refusing to reopen the Government unless Trump agreed to extend pandemic-era tax credits that made health insurance affordable for millions of Americans.
Election victories in multiple states last week gave Democrats further encouragement and a reinvigorated sense of purpose.
But a group of eight moderate Senate Democrats broke ranks to cut a deal with Republicans that offers a vote in the upper chamber on healthcare subsidies – but no floor time in the House and no guarantee of action.
Democrats are now deep in a painful reckoning over how their tough stance crumbled without any notable win.
Democratic leadership is arguing that – while their healthcare demands went largely unheard – they were able to shine the spotlight on an issue they hope will power them to victory in the 2026 midterm elections.
“Over the last several weeks, we have elevated successfully the issue of the Republican healthcare crisis, and we’re not backing away from it,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told MSNBC.
But his Senate counterpart Chuck Schumer is facing a backlash from the fractious progressive base for failing to keep his members unified, with a handful of House Democrats calling for his head.
Outside Washington, some of the party’s hottest tips for the 2028 presidential nomination added their own voices to the chorus of opprobrium.
California Governor Gavin Newsom called the agreement “pathetic”, while his Illinois counterpart JB Pritzker said it amounted to an “empty promise”. Former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg called it a “bad deal”.
– Agence France-Presse
