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UPDATE: President Trump signed the House-passed funding package last night, officially ending the government shutdown.
After more than 40 days of chaos and uncertainty in Washington, the dawn has finally broken. Late last night, the House passed a spending package to reopen the government, ending the historic shutdown.
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From The Hill:
The House on Wednesday passed a sweeping spending package to reopen the government, setting the stage to end a marathon shutdown — the longest in U.S. history — that churned economic turmoil around the country and sparked an internal battle among Democrats over the future of the party and how best to take on President Trump.
The vote in the lower chamber was 222-209, almost strictly along party lines. Only two Republicans opposed the measure, to protest deficit spending, while six Democrats hopped the aisle to support it, citing the importance of getting federal funding flowing again.
The legislation survived an 11th-hour revolt from some House Republicans who balked at a provision, inserted by the Senate days earlier, to empower GOP senators to sue the federal government for hundreds of thousands of dollars if they were among the people whose phone records were seized by federal investigators during their probe into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The Hill notes that Speaker Mike Johnson managed to defuse this revolt by promising to introduce a bill to overturn the Senate’s provision. This bill is expected to be voted on next week.
With the 222-209 vote, the House sent the spending package to President Trump’s desk. Although the bill has not yet been signed as of the time of writing, the White House has indicated that the President will sign it into law immediately.
As we have covered on our site, Democrats blocked the House-passed continuing resolution in late September, causing the government to shut down at the beginning of October. For 43 days, Democrats pressured Republicans, aiming to include a renewal of Obamacare tax subsidies in any funding legislation. This past weekend, however, 8 Democratic Senators joined with Republicans to pass a bill without the Obamacare subsidies, upsetting many on the left.
With the shutdown wrapping up, this will likely start returning to normal. Our nation will not, however, get back on track overnight. Let’s pray for our leaders and our federal employees as the work to reopen our government!
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(Excerpt from The Hill. Photo Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
