The federal government reopened Thursday after President Obama signed a continuing resolution that passed both houses around 12:30 a.m. more than two weeks after Congress’ last funding bill expired on Oct. 1.
It took 16 days for Congress to agree on and pass a budget resolution and end the shutdown – days when many furloughed employees worried about when they would return to work, and billions of dollars in economic activity were lost.
The provisions of the resolution provided funding for the government through Jan. 15, and raised the nation’s debt limit, which will last until Feb. 7.
The shutdown and the furloughs it incurred also had an impact at UCLA. With the federal government open again, students and faculty will now be able to access government data websites like PubMed. Those working in federal jobs, including many UCLA alumni, can go back to work, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will avert its once-imminent closure.
The prospect of a government default, where the U.S. would renege on debt it legally agreed to pay, which is unprecedented in American history, was what motivated Congress to act before the Treasury ran out of its borrowing authority on Thursday, when the debt would hit $16.7 trillion.
Millions of furloughed employees felt anxiety over when they’d be able to return to work and get a paycheck, said P.C. Zai, a UCLA alumnus and federal employee.
Some employees were already applying for unemployment benefits, Zai said. Zai said she was relieved to be back at work, since at the start employees had no idea how long the shutdown would last.
Rene Tiongquico, a UCLA alumnus and policy specialist for the federal government, said his most recent paycheck was about half of what he would have earned normally.
While federal employees will receive retroactive pay for the workdays they had to miss, it was difficult for some people to recover from the shutdown because they didn’t plan for it, he added.
The most noticeable effects of the shutdown were visible in Washington, D.C., where the federal government accounts for much of the city’s employment, Zai said.
On Thursday, however, signs of bustle were reappearing all over the city, from National Mall tours opening to the roads becoming clogged with traffic once again.
Public transportation in the D.C. area is also back to being crowded again, Zai said.
Chris Harrington, a University of California spokesman, said that the UC welcomes the end of the shutdown, especially the return of federal research funding, though the University still wishes for a deal that would repeal government sequester cuts in funding.
Thursday’s deal kept intact reduced spending levels that were put in place by this year’s sequestration, which involved a series of deep cuts in government programs, Harrington said.
“The sequestration is still in place, which is having an ongoing, devastating impact on economic recovery and particularly our research enterprise,” Harrington said.
Thomas Schwartz, a professor of political science at UCLA, said while current polls indicate voters are frustrated with Congressbecause of its failure to avert the shutdown, it would be wrong to read too much into public opinion polls conducted now or in the near future.
“The only true barometer we will have of what impact this crisis had will be in November,” Schwartz said.
While this crisis has passed, some fear that there will be another shutdown when the current deal expires in January.