WASHINGTON — The Senate on Sunday night took the first step toward ending the longest shutdown in U.S. history, after a group of Democrats broke their party’s blockade and voted with Republicans to advance legislation to reopen the government.
The 60-40 vote paved the way for the spending agreement to begin making its way through Congress, where it would still need to be debated and passed by the Senate, win approval in the House and be signed by President Donald Trump to bring the shutdown to a close.
Eight senators in the Democratic caucus voted to advance the measure, which would fund most federal agencies through January. That indicated there were enough votes to end weeks of gridlock that has shuttered the government for 40 days, leaving hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed, millions of Americans at risk of losing food assistance and millions more facing air travel disruptions.
But the deal prompted a quick and fierce backlash among Democrats, many of whom were livid that their colleagues had backed down from the party’s central demand in the shutdown fight: the extension of health insurance subsidies that are slated to expire at the end of the year, sending premiums soaring for millions of Americans.
The compromise measure included a provision that many Democrats had sought to reverse layoffs of federal workers made during the shutdown. It also came with a commitment from Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to allow a vote in December on extending the expiring health insurance tax credits for a year. Many Democrats have said for weeks that such a pledge would be insufficient to win them over, since such a bill has appeared all but certain to die in the Republican-led Congress.
The Democratic defectors’ decision allowed Republicans, who have been unable to push through a temporary spending bill over Democratic opposition, to finally cobble together the 60 votes needed to do so, though reopening the government could still take some time.
‘A lot of people are being hurt’
Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats and was one of the lead negotiators of the deal, said that the length of the shutdown and the pain it was inflicting on Americans had changed the calculus for some of his colleagues, pushing them to support a deal with Republicans that would reopen the government without the extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies they had originally sought.
“I think people were saying ‘We’re not going to get what we want,’ although we still have a chance,” King said, noting Thune’s commitment to hold a vote on the matter. “But in the meantime, a lot of people are being hurt.”
One crucial Democratic convert, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, said Sunday evening that he was backing the deal after securing the provision in the temporary spending bill to reverse layoffs made during the shutdown and ensure furloughed workers would receive back pay.
“This legislation will protect federal workers from baseless firings, reinstate those who have been wrongfully terminated during the shutdown, and ensure federal workers receive back pay, as required by a law I got passed in 2019,” Kaine said in a statement. “That’s a critical step.”
Democratic rift
But the retreat reopened the Democratic rift within the party that emerged in March, when a bloc of Democratic senators voted with Republicans to keep the government open, prompting a progressive backlash.
The shift this time was particularly remarkable given that the deal did not protect the health insurance tax credits, which Democrats had spent weeks arguing was a crucial piece of any government funding agreement. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who had held his party together for more than a month making that case, opposed the deal.
Both Minnesota’s senators voted against the bill. “I will not support this bill that completely fails to help Americans afford their health care,” Sen. Tina Smith said in a statement Sunday night. “Allowing this to pass is a mistake.”
“The President and Congressional Republicans should have come to the table to work with us to lower these costs. In every other budget impasse or shutdown there were negotiations and compromise with the White House. I am committed to lowering health care costs and will do everything I can to get this done,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar said in a statement.
“This health care crisis is so severe, so urgent, so devastating for families back home that I cannot, in good faith, support this CR that fails to address the health care crisis,” Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor, referring to the continuing resolution that would temporarily fund the government.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., also said that House Democrats would not back any such deal.
“Donald Trump and the Republican Party own the toxic mess they have created in our country, and the American people know it,” he said in a statement.
Still, were the plan to pass the Senate, House Democrats would have no chance of defeating it if Republicans held together in support.
Funding through January
The core of the compromise that moved ahead Sunday is a spending package that came out of negotiations among a bipartisan group of moderates, led by the leaders of the Appropriations Committee. It includes a new stopgap measure that would fund the government through January, plus three separate spending bills to cover programs related to agriculture, military construction and legislative agencies for most of 2026.
“Under our legislation, all federal employees, including members of our military and Coast Guard, Capitol Police officers, Border Patrol agents, TSA screeners, air traffic controllers — all will receive their back wages,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, chair of the Appropriations Committee.
Those three bills, released Sunday, omit most of the deep spending cuts that Trump had proposed in his budget this year.
Still, the deal was causing intense consternation across a wide swath of the Democratic caucus, from progressives to moderates.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats, said any retreat from the party’s demands on health care would be “a policy and political disaster.”
And in a reflection of how the deal split their party, Sen. Mark Warner broke with his fellow Virginia Democrat, Kaine, and said he could not back the agreement despite the provisions protecting federal workers. He said he had long pushed for those steps, calling them “a critical step in protecting our public servants from this administration’s campaign of retribution.”
“But I cannot support a deal that still leaves millions of Americans wondering how they are going to pay for their health care or whether they will be able to afford to get sick,” added Warner, who is up for reelection next year.
Democrats had agonized privately for days over whether to prolong the shutdown or find a quick bipartisan compromise. Many had made the case that their party’s victories in last week’s elections in New York, New Jersey and Virginia reflected that their fight was resonating with voters and suggested that they must show they were continuing to press to lower health care costs.
But centrists in the party caucus believed that the spiraling effects of the shutdown — including the threat to SNAP food assistance and the air travel chaos — meant that blocking the funding bills had grown untenable.
In the end, eight broke off Sunday night to side with Republicans and allow the measure to advance: King, Kaine and Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois; John Fetterman of Pennsylvania; Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen, both of New Hampshire; and Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, both of Nevada.
Package contents
The bipartisan spending package contains some provisions that run counter to Trump’s wishes. While he has moved to eliminate the Food for Peace program, which sends surplus American crops to communities around the world that are experiencing famine and starvation, the bill would provide $1.2 billion for the program, which many Republicans hailing from farm states have championed.
Negotiators in the Senate also shut down a bid by House Republicans to hobble the Government Accountability Office, a roughly century-old agency formed to help Congress keep track of federal spending. The GAO has twice determined this year that Trump’s actions violated rules that prohibit him from unilaterally canceling funding, and the agency is allowed under existing law to sue to force a president to release illegally withheld funds.
While the House had proposed to halve funding for the agency, the Senate-written measure would keep its funding flat. The measure also jettisoned a provision by House Republicans that sought to bar the agency from suing the White House in the future.
Still, the package omits any mention of the health care subsidies that Democrats made a centerpiece of the shutdown fight. They had spent weeks demanding that Republicans agree to permanently extend the tax credits in exchange for their votes to fund the government, a condition that the GOP refused to meet.
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On Friday, Schumer had scaled back that demand, saying Democrats would vote to reopen the government if the legislation included an extension of the health tax credits for just one year.
Republicans immediately rejected that proposal as well, calling it a nonstarter.
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