The U.S. Senate ended voting Sunday night to move forward with a bill to reopen the government after a decisive bloc of Democratic senators approved it. Republicans secured the minimum number of votes to pass a compromise spending package that funds most federal agencies through January with the support of eight Democrats. This could end a weeks-long standoff that has seen the government shut down for 40 days. Although this is a preliminary vote, it clears the way for Congress to begin processing the deal. The project will now have to be debated and approved again by the Senate, then the House of Representatives, and finally signed by President Donald Trump to end the strike.
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The preliminary vote was approved 60-40 and took place during an unusual Sunday session, paving the way for Congress to begin processing the deal. The project still needs to be debated and approved by the Senate, then the House of Representatives, and finally signed by President Donald Trump to end the strike.
Democrats’ main demand in fighting the government shutdown was to extend the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of the year, but that topic is not addressed in the agreement voted on today. During the plenary session this Sunday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he would commit Democrats to a vote on extending the Access to Health Care Act funding extension through the second week of December. Still, the end of the government shutdown will leave a bad taste in the mouths of many Democrats.
Republicans, who control 53 votes in the Senate, have unsuccessfully tried in recent weeks to persuade enough Democrats to pass a stopgap spending bill. So far, it has the support of only three members of the Democratic caucus, not enough to reach the minimum 60 votes needed to proceed.
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In a statement explaining his support for the deal, Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, cited the fact that air traffic controllers were working without pay and the uncertainty surrounding federal nutrition aid since the start of the government shutdown.
As a potential deal nears, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, said he would vote to reopen the government with provisions in the short-term spending bill to bring furloughed federal workers back to work and ensure they receive their back pay.
“This legislation protects federal employees from wrongful termination, reinstates those who were wrongly fired during the government shutdown, and ensures that federal employees receive the pay they are owed, as required by legislation I passed in 2019,” Kaine said in a statement. “This is an important step.”
The core of the deal emerging in the Senate is a spending package that moderates in both parties are negotiating in private, including a new stopgap measure to fund the government through January and three separate spending measures covering programs related to agriculture, military construction and legislative bodies through most of 2026.
Senate Budget Committee leaders on Sunday announced a temporary funding measure that includes provisions that Democrats have quietly pushed to reverse President Trump’s federal worker layoffs during the government shutdown and prevent further mass layoffs through January. The three separate spending bills omit most of the deep cuts President Trump proposed in this year’s budget.
For example, President Trump’s proposal would eliminate the Food for Peace program, which sends surplus U.S. crops to hungry and starving communities around the world. The Senate bill would allocate US$1.2 billion (R6.4 billion) to the program, which was championed by many Republican lawmakers from key agricultural states.
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Senate negotiators also rejected a House Republican proposal to cut in half funding for the 100-year-old Government Accountability Office (GAO), which was established to help Congress oversee federal spending. GAO has ruled seven times this year that Mr. Trump’s actions violated rules prohibiting unilateral withdrawal of funds, and current law allows the agency to sue the president to force the release of illegally withheld funds.
Instead, the senators responsible for allocating the funds proposed leaving the GAO’s funding unchanged and eliminating a provision that their House colleagues had proposed that would prevent the agency from suing the White House in the future.
Democrats have spent weeks demanding that Republicans agree to permanently extend health care subsidies in exchange for a vote to fund the government, but Republicans have refused to meet that condition. On Friday, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York scaled back that requirement, saying Democrats would vote to reopen the government if the bill included just a one-year extension of the health care tax credit. Republicans quickly rejected the proposal as unfeasible.
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Democrats across the ideological spectrum were already expressing serious concerns when details of a potential deal emerged Sunday night. Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders, R-Vermont, said as he entered Congress that voting to reopen the government without guaranteeing extended health care benefits would be a “political disaster.”
Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, who was initially part of the bipartisan negotiations, also expressed dissatisfaction with the decision.
—I’ve always said I needed to do something concrete regarding my health, but it’s hard to understand how this happened, she said.
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