U.S. government agencies that had largely shuttered operations for five weeks during a budget standoff said on Saturday they were moving swiftly to resume operations and compensate employees for missed paychecks.
The White House held a conference call with Cabinet department financial officers late Friday to discuss the resumption of government operations, while agencies began to grapple with a backlog of management and policy issues.
The partial government shutdown – at 35 days the longest in U.S. history – led to some 800,000 federal workers going unpaid, including 380,000 furloughed workers.
President Donald Trump on Friday signed a measure to fund the government for three weeks as congressional negotiators try to hammer out a bill to fund the federal government through Sept. 30. Trump had demanded $5.7 billion in funding for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, but Democratic legislators refused to include the money.
The White House Office of Management and Budget’s acting chief, Russell Vought, told agencies in a memo to reopen “in a prompt and orderly manner.”
