President Donald Trump signed a budget package into law Tuesday, ending a partial shutdown of U.S. government operations.
The House of Representatives approved the measure in a close 217-214 vote after the Senate had already passed it last week. Trump called the legislation “a great victory for the American people.” Democrats objected to portions of the bill, particularly funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and provisions tied to controversial federal actions affecting migrants.
The package funds most federal agencies through the end of September but provides only temporary, transitional funding for DHS, extending that department’s budget until Feb. 13 as part of a compromise.
Some agency funding lapsed Saturday when Congress missed its deadline, triggering the partial shutdown that, to date, has not produced major disruptions to government services. The short closure followed negotiations last week in which Trump reached a spending agreement with Senate Democrats, who had pushed for new limits on aggressive immigration enforcement after the killing of two U.S. citizens by federal agents in Minneapolis.
As one step toward those demands, the administration has begun deploying body cameras for immigration agents in Minnesota.
The prior shutdown, a record 43-day lapse in funding in October and November, furloughed hundreds of thousands of federal workers and is estimated to have cost the U.S. economy about $11 billion (roughly €9.3 billion).
