39 days and 20 hours had passed since the start of the longest partial government shutdown in the history of the United States when the spark of the agreement lit on Capitol Hill. It was around 7:00 p.m. this Sunday, with the news that Democrats and Republicans had reached an agreement in the Senate to reopen the funding tap for the Federal Administration.
A proposal, presented hours before by the Republicans of the Upper House, with their leader, John Thune, at the helm, managed to convince three rival senators Angus King (Maine) and Jeanne Saheen and Maggie Hassan (New Hampshire). With them, the conservative bench thus added the 60 votes necessary to achieve the qualified majority required by the rules of the Senate to carry out important decisions; for example, budgetary ones.
This agreement is not yet the last stop on the journey of the shutdownwhich has caused the suspension of the food stamp program for millions of people in need, pushed thousands of employees, deprived of their salaries, into hunger lines and wreaked chaos in airports across the country, but rather the beginning of the end of the closure.
There were still three extraordinary votes in the Upper House before the end of a day, normally a rest day in the Capitol, which this Sunday made an exception given the circumstances. The pact will then travel to the House of Representatives for ratification.
Not all points of the agreement were immediately clear. But it does guarantee the financing of the federal Administration until January 30, when, if the lack of harmony between both parties does not persist, the fight could return to the starting point and cause a new closure.
The budget proposal includes a provision with a point that Democrats demanded: the reinstatement of federal employees laid off during the shutdown, and the guarantee that there will be no more massive workforce adjustments until the end of January. It also banishes the threat made by Donald Trump that officials would not receive retroactive payment for salaries not received during these 40 days.
Out
The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, had taken the floor on Friday in that same place to present his Republican rivals with a proposal to reopen the public spending spigot. Theirs requested as a condition a one-year postponement of the health subsidy program provided for in the law known as Obamacare, to, from then on, negotiate with the other party with the open Administration, as Thune has been asking for for weeks.
“Republicans just need to say yes,” Schumer told them. And the Republicans immediately responded no.
Everything indicates that the agreement has been rushed after the decision of the United States Air Authority (FAA) to order hundreds of flights in the 40 main airports in the United States to deal with air saturation due to the resignations or resignations of controllers, federal employees affected by the Government closure. More than 1,600 flights were canceled on Sunday and delays continued to increase on the third day of the application of an unprecedented measure by the Trump Administration.
The administrative blockade has dozens of federal agencies closed or with low activity due to lack of funds. The almost 13,000 air traffic controllers and thousands of airport security workers. Many have decided to take sick leave to look for another source of income with which to pay the mortgage, the car loan, their children’s school or, simply, to fill the pantry.
There are 750,000 officials suspended from employment and salary, who this Sunday followed the news from the Capitol with logical interest. Officials who, like controllers, are considered “essential,” were obliged to go to work, but without pay.
Dozens of museums, monuments and national parks have been forced to close their doors, which, if this Sunday’s agreement in principle crystallizes, will be able to reopen in the coming days, once their public financing has resumed.
