Members of the US House of Representatives on the evening of 12 November approved a bill to fund government spending, ending the so-called shutdown, the suspension of funding for a significant portion of government services and agencies.
The bill was signed into law by US President Donald Trump shortly afterwards.
According to the law, employees of many government agencies, who did not receive a salary for 43 three days, will be fully compensated, and hundreds of thousands of civil servants who were on forced unpaid leave will return to work, food aid payments to low-income Americans will also resume.
Congress had previously been unable to agree on funding for the government, as Democrats insisted on extending health insurance tax credits and allocating funds for low-cost health care programmes, while Republicans refused to support these demands.
In the end, Democrats were unable to achieve what they wanted. Several Democratic lawmakers voted in favour of the bill after receiving a promise from Republicans to discuss extending the subsidies in the near future.
The Congressional Budget Office calculates that the shutdown will reduce US GDP growth in the fourth quarter by 1.5 per cent.
For most Americans, the most visible symbol of the shutdown was the cancellation of a significant number of flights across the country due to a shortage of air traffic controllers.
The new law provides funding for most government services only until the end of January, when Congress will again need to address the issue of appropriations for government spending.
The US government shutdown has become the longest in the country’s history: the temporary suspension of the US government, which occurs when Congress fails to agree on funding for government agencies, began on 1 October.
The previous record was set in early 2019, during Donald Trump’s first term. Back then, the shutdown lasted 34 days and 21 hours.
To pass the budget, a simple majority of Republicans in both houses of Congress was not enough. In the Senate, the main US financial document must be approved by at least 60 deputies out of 100.