Senate OKs 60-40 Stop-Gap Bill to End 42-Day U.S. Shutdown

Budget brinkmanship has become cyclic in Washington since the 1974 Budget Act; the 1995-96 (26-day) and 2018-19 (35-day) shutdowns ended much like this one—via face-saving temporary deals once public pain (then unpaid air-traffic controllers, now 1.4 million workers and mass flight cancellations) peaked. The latest record-length closure extends a half-century drift toward governing by continuing resolution rather than regular appropriations, and highlights growing executive encroachment—Trump’s attempted mass layoffs—on Congress’s power of the purse. Over a 100-year arc, the episode matters less for the missed paychecks than as another marker of institutional sclerosis: repeated short-term fixes amid a $38 trillion debt echo Britain’s post-Suez loss of fiscal credibility; if shutdowns normalize, the dollar’s status and the federal workforce itself could erode long after this pay period is forgotten.