Whereas a portion of the United States Government was shut down from December 22, 2018, to January 25, 2019; Whereas the shutdown resulted from the President of the United States attempting to use a lapse in appropriations in order to achieve a legislative end that he had not achieved in the regular order of the appropriations process; Whereas the Senate, on December 19, 2018, unanimously passed legislation to fund Government operations and avert a Government shutdown; Whereas the President of the United States on December 20, 2018, announced that he would refuse to sign that legislation due to the President’s insistence that appropriations for particular items be provided at his preferred levels; Whereas as a result of the President’s refusal to sign legislation continuing funding for certain other operations of Government, appropriations lapsed on December 22, 2018; Whereas the Government shutdown lasted for 35 days, the longest Government shutdown in the history of our country; Whereas the lapse in appropriations deprived Americans of important services and caused 800,000 Federal workers to go without pay for more than a month, imposing significant financial hardships on those workers and their families; Whereas the lapse in appropriations detrimentally affected the Federal Government’s ability to recruit and retain career public servants; Whereas the lapse in appropriations put at risk thousands of small businesses with Federal contracts and created severe financial hardship for tens of thousands of employees of Federal contractors; Whereas the top economic advisor to the President of the United States predicted that the Government shutdown would reduce economic growth by 0.1 percent for each week it lasted