WASHINGTON – A deal to reopen the federal government for three weeks easily cleared Congress on Friday after President Donald Trump announced he would back…
WASHINGTON – A deal to reopen the federal government for three weeks easily cleared Congress on Friday after President Donald Trump announced he would back the agreement even though it doesn’t include his demand for billions of dollars in border wall funding.
The House and the Senate approved the measure on a voice vote and sent it to Trump, who is expected to sign the bill into law, ending a 35-day government shutdown – the longest in U. S. history.
“We have reached a deal to end the shutdown and reopen the federal government,” Trump announced a few hours earlier during a hastily arranged address in the White House Rose Garden.
Trump’s decision to back the deal came amid mounting pressure from members of Congress to end the impasse and in the face of public opinion polls showing that most Americans blamed him and Republicans for the shutdown.
Pressure to reopen the government intensified on Friday as airports along the East Coast reported delays because of a lack of air traffic controllers.
A day earlier, competing measures to reopen the government failed in the Senate, setting off a flurry of negotiations and injecting a sense of urgency into the talks that had been missing since nine federal departments closed last month. The idea of a short-term measure to reopen the government for three weeks emerged as part of those discussions.
In his remarks announcing the agreement, Trump sought to declare victory. But the deal contains no new money to build a wall along the U. S.-Mexico border – one of his key demands for reopening the government and one of the signature promises of his 2016 presidential campaign. Democrats flatly refused to negotiate on border wall funding until the government reopens.
“This was in no way a concession,” Trump insisted in a tweet late Friday. “It was taking care of millions of people who were getting badly hurt by the Shutdown with the understanding that in 21 days, if no deal is done, it’s off to the races!”
The deal, hammered out during talks with congressional leaders, would reopen the government through Feb. 15. The fight over Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion in border wall funding will be resolved during further negotiations by a bipartisan congressional conference committee, which will spend the next three weeks looking for ways to secure the border.
