The Senate on Sunday night took the first step toward ending the longest shutdown in American history, after a group of Democrats broke their party’s blockade and voted with Republicans to advance legislation to reopen the government. The core of the compromise that moved ahead on 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. The 60-to-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 J. Trump to bring the shutdown to a close. Eight senators in the Democratic caucus voted to advance the measure, which 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- South Dakota) 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 terribly insufficient to win them over, since such a bill has appeared all but certain to die in the Republican-led Congress and Leader Thune has given Democrats almost zero reason to trust him.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) said this morning that once the Senate passed its version of the bill to end the government shutdown, he would give House members a formal 36-hour notice to return to Washington “so that we can vote as soon as possible” to pass the amended bill and get it to President Trump’s desk. Speaker Johnson also urged senators to avoid procedural delays and allow the measure to be fast-tracked through the Senate so the House could take it up quickly and potentially prevent the shutdown from dragging on any longer.
