US House returns to Washington for vote to end government shutdown

WASHINGTON - Members of the House of Representatives headed back to Washington on Nov 11 after a 53-day break, braving the congestion at the nation’s tangled airports for a vote that could bring the longest US government shutdown in history
to a close.

With nearly 1,200 flights cancelled on Nov 11 due to the shutdown, lawmakers including Republican Representatives Rick Crawford of Arkansas and Trent Kelly of Mississippi said they were carpooling to the Capitol, while Representative Derrick Van Orden said he was making the 16-hour drive from Wisconsin on his motorcycle. 

“It's going to be a little chilly, but I will do my duty,” the Republican lawmaker said in a video posted to social media. 

The Republican-controlled House is due to vote on the afternoon of Nov 12 on a compromise that would restore funding to government agencies and end a shutdown that started on Oct 1 and is now in its 42nd day. The Republican-controlled Senate approved the deal on Nov 10 and House Speaker Mike Johnson has said he expects it to pass his chamber as well.

President Donald Trump is expected to sign it into law. “We're opening up our country. Should have never been closed,” he said at a Veterans Day event in Arlington, Virginia.

The deal would extend funding through Jan 30, setting the stage for another potential shutdown showdown and leaving the federal government for now on a path to keep adding about US$1.8 trillion (S$2.34 trillion) a year to its US$38 trillion in debt.

Within days, the US government could be fully functional again, bringing relief to federal workers who have missed pay cheques and low-income families who depend on food subsidies. However, it could take several days for the nation’s air travel system to return to normal. 

The deal has divided Democrats, who had sought to extend healthcare subsidies for 24 million Americans past the end of the year, when they are due to expire. Senate Republicans have agreed to hold a separate vote on those subsidies in December, but there is no guarantee it will pass the chamber, and Mr Johnson has yet to say whether the House will even hold a vote.

Mr Johnson has kept the House out of session since it passed a stopgap funding Bill on Sept 19, in a bid to pressure Senate Democrats to reopen the government. Mr Trump, for his part, withheld billions of dollars from Democratic-led states and cities and sought to fire thousands of federal workers from what he termed “Democrat agencies”.

The Democratic Party’s liberal base has reacted to the deal with fury, arguing that Senate Democrats had capitulated in a fight they were winning. 

A late October Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 50 per cent of Americans blamed Republicans for the shutdown, while 43 per cent blamed Democrats.

Mr Trump has unilaterally cancelled billions of dollars in spending and trimmed federal payrolls by hundreds of thousands of workers, intruding on Congress' constitutional authority over fiscal matters. 

The deal does not appear to include any specific guardrails to prevent Mr Trump from enacting further spending cuts.

However, it would stall his campaign to downsize the federal workforce, prohibiting him from firing employees until Jan 30.

The deal would also ensure that the Snap food aid programme for the poor, which has been disrupted by the shutdown, would continue uninterrupted until Sept 30, 2026, the end of the fiscal year. REUTERS