U.S. Congress sends bill to Trump guaranteeing back pay for federal workers

The U.S. Congress on Friday sent a bill to President Donald Trump's desk to ensure federal workers furloughed during the ongoing partial government shutdown are paid retroactively.

United States President Donald J. Trump participates in a roundtable discussion on border security and safe communities, January 11, 2019 at the White House in Washington, DC. [Photo: IC]

The House of Representatives voted earlier on Friday to approve the retroactive pay bill, which was unanimously passed by the Senate a day earlier.

Trump is expected to sign the bill, offering support to about 800,000 federal workers who have been forced to go on unpaid leave or work without pay since Dec. 22 when the shutdown started.

Hundreds of thousands of federal workers already felt the bite of missing a paycheck which would normally arrive on this Friday.

Government workers rally against the partial government shutdown at Federal Plaza, Thursday, Jan. 10, 2019, in Chicago. The partial government shutdown continues to drag on with hundreds of thousands of federal workers off the job or working without pay as the border wall fight persists. [Photo: AP/Kiichiro Sato]

As many as 78 percent of American workers reported they were living paycheck to paycheck, according to a 2017 report by employment website CareerBuilder.

The president has locked himself in a stalemate with congressional Democrats in the dispute over his demand for 5.7 billion U.S. dollars for funding a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The partisan fight, with no end in sight, is about to make the partial government shutdown the longest in U.S. history on Saturday.