A group of shutdown-weary Democratic senators voted with Republicans on Sunday night to advance a legislative vehicle to reopen the federal government and end the 40-day shutdown that has left tens of thousands of workers furloughed and caused chaos at the nation’s airports.
The Senate voted 60-40 to proceed to a House-passed continuing resolution to reopen the government, taking a big first step toward ending the shutdown after a group of centrist Democrats negotiated a funding deal with Senate Republican colleagues and the White House.
Senate Democrats blocked that same House-passed bill to fund the government on 14 previous occasions.
But a group of centrist and retiring Democrats felt intense pressure to reopen the government after Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program funding expired Nov. 1 and staff shortages among air traffic controllers resulted in major delays at airports.
Eight Democrats voted to take up the House bill.
The group included Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), who will retire at the end of the year, and Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who represents more than 144,000 federal employees in his home state.
Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who caucuses with Democrats, also voted yes. He worked closely with Shaheen and Hassan to craft the agreement to reopen the government.
Sens. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) voted to end the shutdown, as well, reflecting the position they’ve held for weeks.
Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) joined with her home-state colleague, Cortez Masto, in voting for the measure.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) now plans to amend the House-passed legislative vehicle with the compromise deal worked out with Shaheen, Hassan, King and others.
Shaheen, a member of the Appropriations Committee, worked with committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) on the funding bills included in the package.
Shaheen, who is retiring at the end of next year, acknowledged some of her Democratic colleagues aren’t happy with the deal, which does not include language to extend enhanced health insurance subsidies.
But she argued that keeping much of the federal government closed would only prolong the pain felt by millions of Americans and likely not result in a breakthrough on health-care costs.
“I understand that not all of my Democratic colleagues are satisfied with this agreement, but waiting another week or another month wouldn’t deliver a better outcome. It would only mean more harm for families in New Hampshire,” Shaheen said at a press conference after the vote.
That proposal would fund military construction, veterans’ affairs, the Department of Agriculture and the legislative branch though Sept. 30, 2026.
It includes a stopgap measure to fund the rest of government through Jan. 30.
The compromise proposal includes language to retain more than 4,000 federal workers targeted for layoffs during the shutdown as well as language to prevent the Trump administration from firing additional federal workers through reductions in force (RIFs) for the length of the newly drafted continuing resolution — until Jan. 30.
Kaine was involved in negotiating the protections for federal workers.
Passage of the bill sets the stage for the House of Representatives to return to Washington after being away for seven weeks to vote to send the legislation to President Trump’s desk.
Thune agreed as part of the broader deal to schedule a vote later this year on legislation to extend the enhanced health insurance premium subsidies under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that are due to expire in January.
The Senate GOP leader, however, did not guarantee that any bill to extend the subsidies will pass the Senate or — if it passes the upper chamber — get a vote in the House.
Hassan and King focused on getting Thune to agree to a vote in December on extending enhanced health insurance subsidies.
The deal would ensure that a substantial portion of the federal government is funded through Sept. 30 with regular appropriations bills, a top Democratic priority, and it sets the stage for Congress to act on other regular spending bills funding the Pentagon and the Department of Health and Human Services.
It was cobbled together after weeks of negotiations between Shaheen, Hassan, King and Republican members of the Appropriations Committee, as well as the Senate GOP leadership and the Trump White House.
Sunday’s vote capped weeks of intense negotiations, during which Democratic senators spent many hours in the Capitol basement trying to figure out a way to end the standoff.
Several Democrats who were involved in those talks, including Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), who played a prominent role, ended up voting against proceeding to the legislative vehicle to reopen the government.
Sens. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.), who participated in the meetings, also voted no.
Slotkin said she distanced herself from the negotiations when it became clear the deal would not include a language to extend the ACA subsidies in the bill to fund government.
“I was involved for many weeks. Then, over the last couple weeks, it changed. Last week, it changed, so I wasn’t [involved] in the endgame,” she told reporters after a Democratic caucus meeting Sunday evening.
“I always said it’s got to do something concrete on health care, and it’s hard to see how that happened,” she said.