The funding bill will prevent federal agencies from laying off employees until January 30, 2026.
Washington, DC: US President Donald Trump signed the funding bill passed by the House of Representatives to end the record 43-day government shutdown, the longest in the country's history, this week.
During the signing of the bill, Trump said that the shutdown 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,” he said.
The signature came hours after the Republican-led House of Representatives passed the legislation on November 12 by a 222-209 vote, despite opposition from House Democrats, who are outraged at their Senate colleagues' failure to secure a deal for a guaranteed extension of healthcare subsidies.
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”.
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.
Trump announces $2,000 dividend for AmericansPresident Donald Trump doubled down on his aggressive tariff policy, promising that every American -- except the wealthy -- will soon receive at least $2,000 from tariff revenues collected by his administration. In a post on his Truth Social, Trump lashed out at critics of his trade policy. "People that are against Tariffs are FOOLS!" he wrote, boasting that his administration had turned the United States into "the richest, most respected country in the world, with almost no inflation, and a record stock market price". Trump claimed the country is taking in trillions of dollars from tariffs, with the money set to be used to reduce the $37 trillion national debt. He said the administration would soon begin paying it down while issuing a dividend of at least $2,000 a person (not including high-income people) to all Americans. |
