Hundreds of thousands of US public employees were returning to work today after a late-night deal broke a political deadlock in Congress and avoided a potentially disastrous debt default.
Republicans conceded defeat as a funding agreement was struck to end the 16-day partial shutdown of the US government.
They had blocked the raising of America’s $16.7 trillion debt ceiling and demanded that Barack Obama scale back his healthcare reforms.
But the President stood his ground and won breathing space of a few months, with Republicans pulling back from the brink of a debt default.
“We fought the good fight,” Republican House Speaker John Boehner said. “We just didn’t win.”
The Democrat-controlled Senate voted first, approving the deal by 81 votes to 18 in the mid-evening.
That cleared the way for a final 285-144 vote on the bill in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives about two hours later, ending the immediate crisis shortly before a midnight deadline.
The compromise made no significant changes to the law which demands that every American must be covered by health insurance.
Markets in Europe fell this morning, despite shares surging in the US yesterday.
The bill reopens the government until January 15 and permits the US Treasury to borrow normally until February 7, or perhaps a month longer. Mr Obama signed the legislation into law at 12.30am, as soon as it was passed on Capitol Hill.
“We’ll begin reopening our government immediately, and we can begin to lift this cloud of uncertainty from our businesses and the American people,” he said.
Republican Congressman Harold Rogers said: “After two long weeks, it is time to end this government shutdown. It’s time to take the threat of default off the table. It’s time to restore some sanity to this place.”
Democrats criticised Republicans, who had been urged by Tea Party Right-wingers to insist on healthcare changes. “We’ve ended up just where we started, but at a cost, and it never should have been this way,” said New York senator Charles Schumer.
But Ted Cruz, the hardline Republican senator from Texas who led the failed attempt to kill off Obamacare, blasted his colleagues for caving in.
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“If all 46 Senate Republicans had stood together and simply supported House Republicans in their votes to block the healthcare bill, this result, I believe, would have been very, very different,” he said.
Even before the President signed the bill, California’s Yosemite National Park said that its roads and public areas would reopen immediately.
