The US government has ended the longest shutdown in history.
On January 25, US President Donald Trump signed into law a bill providing temporary funding to allow the government to fully resume operations for three weeks, thus ending the partial government shutdown that had lasted for more than a month.
 |
| US President Donald Trump. |
However, the bill sets a three-week deadline, February 15th, for lawmakers and the White House to discuss border security.
The bill was passed overwhelmingly by the US Senate and was subsequently approved by the US House of Representatives.
In recent days, disagreements over the $5.7 billion budget for building a wall on the border with Mexico have prevented the Democratic and Republican parties from agreeing on the government budget for fiscal year 2019, leading to a partial government shutdown in the US since December 22, 2018.
To date, the Trump administration and Democratic leaders in Congress have held several rounds of negotiations to break the deadlock, but none have yielded positive results.
This partial government shutdown was the longest in U.S. history and affected a quarter of federal agencies, with approximately 800,000 federal employees furloughed or working without pay.
However, Donald Trump warned he would continue to shut down the government or declare a state of emergency if there was no breakthrough on the $5.7 billion border wall project within the next three weeks.
"In a short time, I will sign a bill to reopen the government. In the next 21 days, I hope that both the Democratic and Republican parties will work in good faith," he said.
The American leader warned: "If we don't get a fair deal from Congress, the government will shut down again on February 15th, or I will use my powers under U.S. law and the Constitution to resolve this emergency."
