​Tepid relief: On the end of the shutdown in the U.S.

President Donald Trump has garnered the dubious honour of presiding over the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history, a 43-day spiral of economic uncertainty and gloom that was finally terminated this week. Plunging the lives of nearly 1.4 million furloughed and pay-denied federal employees into chaos, Mr. Trump and his Republican colleagues in Congress appeared to prevail over the hopes of Democrats to extend health insurance subsidies for low-income Americans, set to expire at the end of 2025. In return, they conceded precious little — the assurance of holding a vote in the U.S. Senate on the subsidies, but not a vote in the House of Representatives and no promised support by Republicans for the Democrats’ position on the subject. However, Republican lawmakers won by 60 votes against 40 in the Senate, to end the shutdown deadlock on Sunday, only because eight Democrats broke with their party ranks to support the package to fund some federal agencies and policies for the entire fiscal year, and others until January 30, 2026. A triumphant Mr. Trump vowed to press on with his campaign to end the congressional filibuster, the practice envisioned to be a means to check hasty or ham-handed legislative action, deployed by Democrats on this occasion to fight for affordable health care for low-income families.

While breaking the logjam in Congress will come as a relief to many, it is hard to understate the impact of the shutdown on the economy, which saw the suspension of a range of public services, including flights, a setback to routine functions in sectors such as food and nutrition benefits including food stamps for the poor, early learning programmes for poorer families, and those relating to the Internal Revenue Service, national parks and social services more broadly. Yet, the sheer muscle power that Republicans enjoy through their control of both houses of Congress helped them put Democrats on the back foot on the shutdown issue, despite the latter’s victory in the recent mayoral, gubernatorial and other State-level elections. However, the acid test in the swing of the power pendulum between Mr. Trump, emboldened by the margin of his win at the ballots in last year’s presidential election, and resurgent Democratic lawmakers, will be next year’s mid-term elections. This will serve as a de facto referendum on the Trump administration’s job performance and will principally include within its purview economic policy issues impacting ordinary Americans, such as jobs, as well as questions on health care, education and immigration. Unless Republicans give some quarter to their liberal and progressive colleagues across the aisle, they face the risk of alienating a sizeable cohort of voters in the months ahead.