Restarting the federal bureaucracy after the longest government shutdown in US history may still take several days.
US President Donald Trump signed the funding bill passed by the House of Representatives to end the longest government shutdown in American history on Wednesday evening. 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.
During the signing of the bill, 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.”
While speaking 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 before signing the bill, as Republican lawmakers applauded around him.
When will government operations resume fully?
Restarting the federal bureaucracy after the longest government shutdown in US history may still take several days.
Transportation secretary Sean Duffy told reporters on Wednesday that he expects it will take about a week before flight restrictions at major airports begin to be lifted.
Inside the funding bill to end government shutdown
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.
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.
