WASHINGTON - Congress on Wednesday ended the longest government shutdown in US history -- 43 days that paralysed Washington and left hundreds of thousands of workers unpaid while Donald Trump's Republicans and Democrats played a high-stakes blame game.
The Republican-led House of Representatives voted largely along party lines to approve a Senate-passed package that will reopen federal departments and agencies, as many Democrats fume over what they see as a capitulation by party leaders.
"They knew that it would cause pain, and they did it anyway," House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a withering floor speech before the vote, pointing the finger for the standoff at the minority party.
"The whole exercise was pointless. It was wrong and it was cruel."
The package -- which Trump is scheduled to sign later Wednesday evening -- funds military construction, veterans' affairs, the Department of Agriculture and Congress itself through next fall, and the rest of government through the end of January.
Around 670,000 furloughed civil servants will report back to work, and a similar number who were kept at their posts with no compensation -- including more than 60,000 air traffic controllers and airport security staff -- will get back pay.
The deal also restores federal workers fired by Trump during the shutdown, while air travel that has been disrupted across the country will gradually return to normal.
The White House said the president planned to sign the bill in an Oval Office ceremony.
Trump himself had little to say on the vote, although he took to social media to falsely accuse Democrats of having "cost our Country $1.5 Trillion... with their recent antics of viciously closing our Country."
The full financial toll of the shutdown has yet to be determined, although the Congressional Budget Office estimates that it has caused $14 billion in lost growth.
Johnson and his Republicans had almost no room for error as their majority is down to two votes.
Democratic leadership -- furious over what they see as their Senate colleagues folding -- had urged members to vote no and all but a handful held the line.