The Senate passed legislation on Monday night to end the nation’s longest government shutdown, after a critical splinter group of Democrats joined with Republicans and backed a spending package that omitted the chief concession their party had spent weeks demanding.
The 60-to-40 vote, on Day 41 of the shutdown, signalled a break in the gridlock that has shuttered the government for weeks, leaving hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed, millions of Americans at risk of losing food assistance and millions more facing air-travel disruptions.
The measure goes next to the House, which is expected to take it up no sooner than Wednesday and where the small Republican margin of control and intense Democratic opposition could make for a close vote. President Donald Trump has indicated that he will sign it.
The breakthrough came after eight Senators in the Democratic caucus broke their own party’s blockade of spending legislation Republicans have been trying to pass for weeks to reopen the government, prompting a bitter backlash in their ranks.
They said they had done so after concluding that Republicans were never going to accede to Democrats’ central demand in the shutdown fight — the extension of federal health care subsidies set to expire at the end of the year — while millions of Americans continued to suffer amid the federal closure.
“We had no path forward on healthcare because the Republicans said, ‘We will not talk about healthcare with the government shutdown,’” said Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia. “And we had SNAP beneficiaries and those relying on other important services who were losing benefits because of the shutdown.”
It will still take days to reopen the government. Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday urged House members — who have not held a vote in nearly two months as they took an extended recess during the shutdown — to begin the process of returning to Washington “right now”.
At the White House, Trump said that he approved of the plan.
“We’ll be opening up our country very quickly,” he said, calling the package “very good”.
While the legislation omits any mention of the tax credits, Democrats said they would accept an offer by Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, to hold a vote on the issue later this year, when the subsidies are set to expire.
But that measure, which would require 60 votes to pass, faces long odds in the Republican-controlled Senate and even less chance of advancing in the House, where Johnson would be unlikely to bring it up amid widespread opposition in his party.Many Democrats, including a phalanx of Senators across the ideological spectrum, called that commitment woefully insufficient and angrily denounced the spending deal.
After holding his party together for 40 days in the shutdown fight, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, opposed the deal made by some of his own members because, he said on Monday, “it fails to do anything of substance to fix America’s healthcare crisis”.
Others argued the agreement amounted to enabling Trump’s agenda and tactics, when Democrats should instead be standing up to him and Republicans.
New York Times News Service