House Ends Longest Shutdown in History, Sends Funding Bill to Trump
President Trump is slated to sign the bill on Wednesday evening
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WASHINGTON _The House passed legislation Wednesday to keep the government funded through Jan. 30 in a 222-209 vote, sending the bill to end the longest government shutdown in history to the president’s desk.
Two Republicans voted against the measure, while six Democrats broke party lines and supported the legislation.
The lower chamber returned after a 54-day break, during which House GOP leadership cancelled legislative days while attempting to pressure Senate Democrats into backing a bill without Democratic demands for Affordable Care Act subsidies they argue are necessary to prevent a spike in health care premiums.
The Senate passed the measure Monday evening in a 60-40 vote, with seven Democrats and one Independent supporting it. Centrist Democrats struck a deal with Republicans to fund the government through Jan. 30 at current levels, plus three full-year appropriations bills covering military construction and the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Agriculture and FDA, and legislative branch operations. In exchange, Democrats secured language reversing shutdown-related firings through the end of January and assurances that a bill to restore ACA subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of the year, would reach the Senate floor before the second week of December.
Bipartisan concerns emerged over language included in the Senate-passed version to allow senators — but not House members — to sue federal departments or agencies for seizing their phone records without notice for “the greater of statutory damages of $500,000 or the amount of actual damages” following former special counsel Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 investigation, which was added to the bill without the House’s knowledge.
Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.), a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee who represents a military-heavy district, said he was backing the stopgap because its “dependent upon people getting a paycheck” but asserted “the Senate language has got to be reversed.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) later posted on X plans for Republicans to introduce “standalone legislation to repeal this provision that was included by the Senate in the government funding bill. We are putting this legislation on the fast track suspension calendar in the House for next week.”
Both parties remained entrenched in their positions for weeks, with each side blaming the other for the shutdown.
“House Democrats voted to shut the government down 54 days ago,” Johnson said on the floor on Wednesday. “Since that time, Senate Democrats have voted 14 times to close the government. They admitted they were using the American people as leverage in this political game. They knew it would cause pain and did it anyway. The whole exercise was pointless, wrong, and cruel.”
While Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s (R-S.D.) commitment to hold a vote on Obamacare subsidies convinced enough Democrats to support the legislation, Johnson declined to commit to bringing such a measure to the House floor. The Senate’s passage of the bill sparked infighting among Democrats, with some lawmakers questioning Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) leadership.
The 43-day shutdown created more than a month of uncertainty for SNAP recipients, caused extensive flight cancellations, and left federal employees missing multiple paychecks.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) vowed to continue the fight for ACA subsidies.
“We believe as Democrats, health care has to be a right that’s affordable and available to every single American,” Jeffries said during his remarks on the floor ahead of the vote.
“There’s a discharge petition to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits for three years because we believe that working-class Americans deserve the same level of certainty that Republicans always provide to the wealthy and their well-connected donors. The tax credits expire on December 31, and we will stay on this issue until we get it resolved for everyday Americans,” he added.
The discharge petition, which allows lawmakers to bypass leadership and force a vote on the floor, needs 218 signatures to succeed. It remains unclear whether it will garner sufficient Republican support.
Johnson swore in Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva shortly before the vote took place, after declining to do so for seven weeks despite Democrats pushing him to. Grijalva won the special election to fill her father’s seat, but Johnson delayed her swearing-in, a move Democrats blasted as an attempt to stall the support needed to release the Epstein files. Johnson has denied that was his motivation.
President Trump is slated to sign the bill, which the administration expressed support for ahead of the vote, on Wednesday evening.
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