DETROIT (WWJ) -- The U.S. congress voted Friday night to end the longest government shutdown in the nation's history, leading many Metro Detroiters to breathe a sigh of relief.
After 35 days of the partial shutdown, the Senate and House both voted unanimously to reopen the government for three weeks and President Donald Trump said he plans to sign legislation that will fund shuttered federal agencies until Feb. 15 and try again then to persuade legislators to finance his long-promised wall at the U.S.-Mexican border.
The new deal does not contain new money for the wall, but it contains relief for many federal workers who have gone two pay periods without paychecks. The president says he expects back pay to happen swiftly.
Many Metro Detroiters told WWJ's Jon Hewett Friday evening, they're just glad it's over, even if it may only last three weeks.
“Hopefully the temporary will lead to more talking," Chris Pope of Shelby Township said. "I mean, they haven’t been talking at all.”
Although happy to hear the news of the agreement in the works, Pope was left wondering why President Trump opted for a partial shutdown as leverage in his long-promised fight for the wall.
“It seems that, just to get his funding, it wasn’t the right thing to do.”
Janet Diggs of Detroit, a furloughed IRS employee, was also happy to hear news of the shutdown ending, but was a bit less diplomatic.
“Pure ‘B.S.,’" she told Hewett. "We waited 35 days for this?”
Diggs says she felt it was all "smoke and mirrors and feels like she's "in a carnival."
“Him defaulting on a promise, that promise he was never going to make. There’s something else – I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but there’s something else that this is all about. I don’t know whether it’s the Russians, Roger Stone, you shut down airports, and now an announcement. – I’m just waiting on the other shoe to drop.”
Congresswoman Debbie Dingell (D-MI) was one of many Michigan politicians to issue a statement after the agreement was reached, saying "it never should have come to this.
"Federal workers were held hostage for more than a month, many told to come to work while not being paid," the statement said. "As this shutdown goes into the history books we cannot for one second let the human face of this shutdown get lost. People were scared to death of how to pay their bills and worried that hits to their credit scores would affect background checks, security clearances, and future employment. All of Congress cares about keeping our nation secure. We have a lot of work to do to regain American’s trust in their government.”
Republican Congressman Paul Mitchell also released a statement, saying he was in full support of the deal.
“I support President Donald Trump’s decision to reopen the government and pay our hard-working federal employees," the statement said. "My priorities remain what they have always been: to secure our nation’s borders, deal with the humanitarian crisis at the border, and reform our nation’s broken immigration system which has been ignored for far too long.”
Ivan Franklin of Detroit, who has family members that have been impacted by the shutdown as well, says no matter what side of the political aisle one is on, the shutdown helped no one.
“I think it waste of time to begin with, but I’m happy it’s over,” Franklin said. “Politicians, whether Republican, Democrat, Conservative, Liberal, they ought to be able to sit down and pick out a budget for the government and pass it.”