Around 670,000 federal employees who were sent on forced leave can return to their jobs with the interim budget. A similar number of people who have had to work without pay in recent weeks – including more than 60,000 air traffic controllers and airport security employees – are now to receive their money retroactively. According to the website FlightAware, around 1,000 flights in the USA were canceled and more than 400 others were delayed on the last day of the household lockdown.
When signing the interim budget, Trump again sharply attacked the opposition Democrats. “Today we send a clear message that we will never allow ourselves to be blackmailed,” he said. Congress had previously approved the law. After the Senate, the House of Representatives voted for the interim budget with 222 votes in favor and 209 against. Six Democratic representatives voted with the government majority, two Republicans from the presidential camp voted against it.
Trump claimed that the shutdown cost the US economy $1.5 trillion (around €1.3 trillion). The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), however, puts the costs in a preliminary estimate at $14 billion, a fraction of the amount mentioned by Trump.
On Sunday, senators from Trump’s Republicans achieved a breakthrough in the weeks-long budget dispute with the help of eight Democrats. The compromise is highly controversial among the Democrats; their core demands were not met. The main point of contention was health care. The Democrats demanded additional money for around 24 million people in need, whose health insurance is likely to become twice as expensive due to the expiration of tax breaks from the turn of the year. It is extremely uncertain whether a vote on this will take place in December and whether the Democrats will be able to prevail.
The influential California Governor Gavin Newsom called the agreement with Trump’s Republicans “pathetic”, and other leading Democrats made similar comments. The party’s minority leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, is now under strong pressure within the party because he failed to achieve unity within his own ranks. Schumer himself voted against the budget compromise.
However, the eight Democrats in the Senate who were willing to compromise said they had previously been exposed to increasing criticism in their constituencies. Because of the shutdown, many government services were canceled or scaled back. For example, food aid for 42 million people in need has temporarily expired. There have also been significant disruptions to air traffic in the past few days. Shortly before the Thanksgiving family celebration at the end of November, this caused massive anger among the population.
An interim budget is essentially an emergency solution. The US Congress actually has to approve the funding of government agencies for the coming fiscal year on October 1st. However, this deadline is regularly not met, so short-term interim budgets are agreed. The fiscal years in the United States run from October 1st to September 30th.
The interim budgets repeatedly cause political disputes and sometimes lead to budget freezes. There have been more than a dozen such shutdowns in the U.S. since 1981, many lasting just a day or two. The previous longest shutdown occurred during Trump’s first term in office at the turn of the year 2018/2019 and lasted 35 days. The background was a dispute over the financing of the border wall with Mexico demanded by Trump.
