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WASHINGTON: The US Senate on Monday approved a compromise that would end the longest government shutdown in US history, breaking a weeks-long stalemate that has disrupted food benefits for millions, left hundreds of thousands of federal workers unpaid and snarled air traffic. The 60-40 vote passed with the support of nearly all of the chamber’s Republicans and eight Democrats, who unsuccessfully sought to tie government funding to health subsidies that are due to expire at the end of the year. While the agreement sets up a December vote on those subsidies, which benefit 24 million Americans, it does not guarantee they will continue.
The deal would restore funding for federal agencies that lawmakers allowed to expire on October 1 and would stall President Donald Trump’s campaign to downsize the federal workforce, preventing any layoffs until January 30.
It next heads to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, where Speaker Mike Johnson has said he would like to pass it as soon as Wednesday and send it on to Trump to sign into law. Trump has called the deal to reopen the government “very good.” The deal would extend funding through January 30, leaving the federal government for now on a path to keep adding about $1.8 trillion a year to its $38 trillion in debt. Coming a week after Democrats won high-profile elections in New Jersey, Virginia and elected a democratic socialist as the next mayor of New York City, the deal has provoked anger among many Democrats who note there is no guarantee that the Republican-controlled Senate or House would agree to extend the health insurance subsidies.
“We wish we could do more,” said Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the chamber’s No. 2 Democrat. “The government shutting down seemed to be an opportunity to lead us to better policy. It didn’t work.”
A late October Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 50 percent of Americans blamed Republicans for the shutdown, while 43 percent blamed Democrats.
US stocks rose on Monday, buoyed by news of progress on a deal to reopen the government.
Trump has unilaterally canceled billions of dollars in spending and trimmed federal payrolls by hundreds of thousands of workers, intruding on Congress’s constitutional authority over fiscal matters. Those actions have violated past spending laws passed by Congress, and some Democrats have questioned why they would vote for any such spending deals going forward.
The deal does not appear to include any specific guardrails to prevent Trump from enacting further spending cuts.
However, the deal would fund the SNAP food-subsidy program through September 30 of next year, heading off any possible disruptions if Congress were to shut down the government again during that time.