Congress looked set Wednesday to end the longest government shutdown in US history -- 43 days that paralyzed Washington and left hundreds of thousands of workers unpaid while Donald Trump's Republicans and Democrats played a high-stakes blame game.

The House of Representatives was expected to rubber-stamp a contentious Senate-passed funding package that will reopen federal agencies. But the Democratic base is furious over what it sees as a capitulation by its leaders.

"We believe the long national nightmare will be over tonight. It was completely and utterly foolish and pointless in the end, as we said all along," House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters, pointing the finger for the standoff at the minority party.

The package would fund military construction, veterans' affairs, the Dep

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