Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: After a million employees going without paychecks and hundreds of thousands suffering delays in or cancellation of nearly 20,000 flights since October 1 across the USA and beyond, among other losses, Americans heaved a sigh of relief on Wednesday when President Donald Trump signed the funding bill passed by the House of Representatives to end the longest-ever, 43-day-long government shutdown in American history.
He also blamed Democrats for the cancellation or delay of 20,000 flights and the loss of pay for more than 1 million government workers during the shutdown.
Trump said, “The Democrats’ shutdown has inflicted massive harm. They caused 20,000 flights to be cancelled or delayed…They deprived more than 1 million government workers of their paychecks and cut off food stamp benefits for millions and millions more Americans in need. They caused tens of thousands of federal contractors and small businesses to go unpaid.”
About the total effect of the shutdown, he said that it would take weeks to assess them and probably months to really calculate accurately, including the serious harm that they did to our economy and to people and to families”.
“Today we are sending a clear message that we will never give in to extortion,” Trump said in the Oval Office, White House, before signing the bill, as Republican lawmakers applauded around him.
Restarting the federal bureaucracy after the longest government shutdown in US history may still take several days.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told reporters that he expects it will take about a week before flight restrictions at major airports begin to be lifted.
The bill reverses the firing of federal employees carried out by the Trump administration since the start of the shutdown. It also protects federal workers from any more layoffs until January and guarantees payment for all affected workers once operations resume, the media reported on Thursday.
Approximately 670,000 furloughed government employees are expected to return to work. Another similar number who continued working without pay, including more than 60,000 air traffic controllers and airport security staff, will receive back pay.
The longest-ever shutdown caused financial stress for federal workers who went without pay, stranded scores of travellers at airports, and also generated long queues at some food banks.
The signing ceremony came just two hours after the Republican-led House of Representatives passed the bill by a vote of 222-209. Trump’s signature on the bill, which the Senate cleared earlier this week, will bring federal workers idled by the shutdown back to their jobs starting as early as Thursday, reports said.
The bill would extend funding through January 30, leaving the federal government on a path to keep adding about USD 1.8 trillion a year to its USD 38 trillion in debt. The bill includes a reversal of the firing of federal workers by the Trump administration since the shutdown began on October 1.
It also protects federal workers against further layoffs through January and guarantees they are paid once the shutdown is over.
The bill for the Agriculture Department means people who rely on key food assistance programs will see those benefits funded without threat of interruption through the rest of the budget year. The package includes USD 203.5 million to boost security for lawmakers and an additional USD 28 million for the security of Supreme Court justices.
The restoration of food aid to millions of citizens might make room in the household budgets for spending as the Christmas season approaches.
The end of the shutdown also means the restoration in coming days of the flow of data on the US economy from key statistical agencies.