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Deal Reached, Government Shutdown Over

(CNN) — After all the bickering and grandstanding, the billions lost and trust squandered, it was much ado about nothing The partial government shutdown&#...
US Congress

(CNN) — After all the bickering and grandstanding, the billions lost and trust squandered, it was much ado about nothing

The partial government shutdown’s finally over. The debt ceiling debacle has been averted. Obamacare remains virtually unscathed.

The hardline House Republicans, whose opposition to the President’s signature healthcare law set this all in motion, got pretty much zip — except maybe their reputations marred.

“To say we as Republicans left a lot on the table would be one of the biggest understatements in American political history,” Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina tweeted.

But it’s all temporary — the cliched kicking of the can. In a few months, Congress will come back to fight the same battles.

For now, though, thousands of furloughed federal workers will return to work Thursday, the U.S. can pay its bills, and an economic superpower can again boast a functioning government.

Pundits will conduct a post-mortem of the bitter stalemate. And the public will look ahead to what’s next.

Local Votes

Senate: Casey (D) Yea, Toomey (R) Nay
House: Barletta (R) Yea, Cartwright (D) Yea, Marino (R) Nay, Thompson (R) Yea

Last-minute save

Everything came together Wednesday on a frenzied night of deadline deals. Lawmakers toiled through the night, coming precariously close to hitting the midnight debt ceiling deadline.

The Senate brokered a bill to end the 16-day-long shutdown and raise the debt limit. The GOP-led House passed it. And early Thursday morning, President Barack Obama signed it into law.

But it wasn’t Republicans who made it happen; a majority of that party’s caucus actually voted against the measure. The bill passed 285-144, with overwhelming Democratic support and the approval of about 80 House Republicans.

Had Congress not approved a debt limit increase, the government would have started running out of money to pay its bills. Social Security checks and veterans’ benefits could have stopped. The markets could have gone into a tailspin.

And now that Congress has approved a temporary spending plan, the government can re-emerge from its partial shutdown. More than 800,000 furloughed employees can start coming back to work. More than 1 million others who’ve been working without pay will see paychecks again.

Federal workers should expect to return to work Thursday morning, the Office of Management and Budget said.

A temporary bandage

The country will now be funded through January 15, and the debt cushion has been extended through February 7.

But there are clues the country will go through this mess again.

The bill that passed Wednesday night doesn’t address many of the contentious and complicated issues that continue to divide Democrats and Republicans, such as changes to entitlement programs to tax reform.

“We think that we’ll be back here in January debating the same issues,” John Chambers, managing director of Standard and Poor’s rating service, told CNN on Wednesday night. “This is, I fear, a permanent feature of our budgetary process.”

For what it’s worth, the heads of the Senate and House budget committees — Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington and GOP Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin — will meet Thursday to try to tackle these budget divides. They’ll head budget negotiations intended to come up with a broader spending plan for the rest of fiscal year 2014, which ends on September 30.

But Obama said he’s not in the mood for more of the same, saying politicians have to “get out of the habit of governing by crisis.”

“Hopefully, next time, it will not be in the 11th hour,” he told reporters, calling for both parties to work together on a budget, immigration reform and other issues.

A $24 billion battle

The partial government shutdown that lasted 16 days has come at a steep cost. Standard and Poor’s estimated it took a $24 billion bite out of the economy.

Then there’s the impact it had on politicians’ image. If there’s one thing polls showed Americans agreed on, it’s that they don’t trust Congress — with Republicans bearing more blame than anyone else for what transpired.

Both sides kept talking past each other, with Republicans insisting for a time that defunding, delaying or otherwise altering Obamacare must be part of any final deal. Democrats, meanwhile, stood firm in insisting they’d negotiate — but only after the passage of a spending bill and legislation to raise the debt without anti-Obamacare add-ons.

In the end, Democrats largely got what they wanted after some last-minute talks by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Reid hailed the agreement he worked out with McConnell as “historic,” saying that “in the end, political adversaries put aside their differences.”

McConnell said any upcoming spending deal should adhere to caps set in a 2011 law that included forced cuts known as sequestration.

“Preserving this law is critically important to the future of our country,” McConnell said of the Budget Control Act, which resulted from the previous debt ceiling crisis in Washington.

Republicans did get a small Obamacare concession: requiring the government to confirm the eligibility of people receiving federal subsidies under the health care program.

While some Republicans, such as tea party favorite Sen. Ted Cruz, claimed moral victories in energizing their movement, House Speaker John Boehner didn’t even pretend his side came out victorious.

“We fought the good fight; we just didn’t win,” Boehner told a radio station in his home state of Ohio.

Cruz, despite being in the Senate, is credited with spearheading the House Republican effort to attach amendments that would dismantle or defund Obamacare.

All were rejected by the Democratic-led Senate, and Obama also pledged to veto them, meaning there was virtually no chance they ever would have succeeded.

Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire called the House GOP tactic of tying Obamacare to the shutdown legislation “an ill-conceived strategy from the beginning, not a winning strategy.”

Markets mixed after agreement

Wall Street sighed with relief. U.S. stocks rose Wednesday on the news of an agreement. The benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped more than 200 points on the day.

But world markets had a tepid reaction Thursday, with markets mixed in Asia.

“The U.S. is the largest economic power in the world, it’s not just about its own interest, but also affects the world economic stability,” the Chinese foreign ministry said. “China welcomes the progress and development of resolving the matter.”

Here are five most surprising provisions to the bill:

1. RIVER PROJECT

Kentucky kickback?: $2.2 billion. That’s the amount in additional cash authorized for a project that involved a dam and decades-old locks on a river that flows through Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s home state of Kentucky. Sounds kinda fishy, but a Democratic senate aid and a Republican senator say it’s on the level. The aide tells CNN that McConnell didn’t push for the project to be included. And Sen. Lamar Alexander, who’s a key figure on the committee that oversees what water projects get what money, says he and another senator asked for the cash. He tells CNN’s Chris Frates the new money — which more tha triples the original $775 million — will save the federal government many millions because contracts won’t be canceled due to work stoppages. Still, the Senate Conservatives Fund calls the money a “Kentucky Kickback.”

2. FLOOD RECOVERY FUNDS

Bridge to somewhere: This one’s a lot less controversial than the river project money. Congress OK’d $450 million for rebuilding projects in flood-struck areas of Colorado. That’s well over the limit of $100 million for the Department of Transportation as allowed in the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act. Wednesday’s authorization used similar language to a bill that died last month after the House declined to vote on it, according to Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado. He said Coloradans had been resilient, but they needed the money because “it’s time to let us get to work” rebuilding roads and bridges wiped out by overflowing rivers.

3. LATE SENATOR’S WIDOW

For decades of service: Frank Lautenberg served in the Senate for almost 30 years. He died in June of viral pneumonia. This nation owed him a great deal. Congress has almost always approved a death benefit gift to the family equal to one year’s salary, which they provided for Lautenberg’s widow, Bonnie, in the bill. The thing is … Lautenberg was one of the richest members of Congress and was worth more than $59 million as of 2011, according to The Hill. You can see why some people think it might not be a terrible thing to forgo a few hundred thousand bucks to the family.

4. OTHER WINNERS

Ssssh, we’re getting a big check: There were more agencies that got big money in the bill. Agencies that fight wildfires could get as much as $636 million, depending on how bad it gets in the next year. The mine safety department is getting a bump in the fees it can keep, a $1 million increase to $2.49 million. A watchdog group meant to guard Americans’ right to privacy against overreach by government cyberintelligence will get $3.1 million, which they could use considering the year they’ve had dealing with revelations about the super-secret National Security Agency’s programs. The Hill, a political newspaper, reports that’s double the top amount the five-member panel has been given before.

5. SAME PAY FOR CONGRESS

No raise this year: Down on page 20 of the bill, it says there will be no cost of living adjustment for members of Congress for the next year. Actually, it’s not that surprising. Congressional pay has held steady for years. They last received a raise four years ago. And you thought you had it rough. Wait, you don’t make $174,000 a year?

What’s next

The Senate’s Democratic leader said he never wants to go through the recent turmoil ever again.

“Let’s be honest: This was pain inflicted on our nation for no good reason, and we cannot make — we cannot, cannot make — the same mistake again,” Reid said Wednesday.

But former House Speaker Newt Gingrich predicts tea party and staunch conservatives in the GOP will be more energized after not getting the anti-Obamacare amendments they wanted.

“They will be more embittered, more angry. They will find more ways to go after Obama because they can’t find any way to get him to negotiate,” he said, adding that he expects Obamacare to become the defining issue of the next two elections cycles.

As Obama walked away from a press conference Wednesday night, he was asked whether he thought America would be going through this brouhaha again in a few months.

His answer: “No.”

We’ll see.

CNN’s Brianna Keilar, Deirdre Walsh, Dana Bash, Erin McPike, Steve Brusk, Eliott C. McLaughlin, Paul Steinhauser, Ashley Killough, Craig Broffman, Jim Acosta, Mark Preston and Dan Merica contributed to this report.

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