House lawmakers returned to the Capitol on Wednesday and passed the bipartisan government funding package, leaving lawmakers one Donald Trump signature away from ending the longest shutdown in U.S. history.
After 43 days of shuttered government and unpaid federal workers, the House voted 222-209 to pass the Senate’s funding deal — with 216 Republicans and six Democrats supporting the bill, and two Republicans and 207 Democrats opposed.
The legislation includes a full fiscal year’s worth of funding for the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Veterans Affairs, military construction and the legislative branch itself. It also funds the remaining parts of government until the end of January, giving lawmakers more time to negotiate another spending deal.
Notably, the agreement to reopen the government also would reverse layoffs that took place during the shutdown, and would block more layoffs until February.
“From the very beginning of this whole ordeal, on the Republican side, we operated in good faith,” Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said on the House floor Wednesday night.
“Every single day of this shutdown, we went right out, looked in the camera with a press conference, and told the American people the simple truth: We have done for the people what has been right and just and truthful,” he said.
He added that he didn’t want to take up more time speaking because he just wanted to reopen the government.
Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said Republicans have “zero interest” in making life better for the American people, taking particular issue with Republicans refusing to extending Obamacare subsidies.
“It can’t be the case that health care is simply a privilege for the wealthy, the well-off and well-connected,” Jeffries said, claiming that was the Republican perspective. “We believe as Democrats that health care has to be a right, and a right that’s affordable and available to every single American in the United States. That’s what this fight is all about.”
Predictably, the vote fell almost entirely along party lines, with Reps. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, Don Davis, D-N.C., Jared Golden, D-Maine, Adam Gray, D-Calif., Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Wash., and Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., joining Republicans in support of the bill. Only Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Greg Steube, R-Fla., opposed the bill on the GOP side.
Democratic leaders urged their members to vote against the legislation, noting it didn’t address their central shutdown demand: the Obamacare subsidies.
Throughout the shutdown, which started on Oct. 1, Democrats have insisted they’d need substantive action on extending the subsidies before they’d vote to reopen the government. But after eight Senate Democrats went along with Republicans in the upper chamber, the leverage Democrats once had to extract those demands promptly exited through a Senate chamber door.
The enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits are set to expire at the end of the year, and without action on those subsidies, premiums for Obamacare will skyrocket next year.
Republicans have argued health care should be addressed separately from government funding — and insisted they would only negotiate on the premiums once the government was reopened — but it’s unclear how serious Republicans are about extending those tax credits.
While a resolution to the shutdown looked doubtful throughout the standoff, a deal suddenly took shape over the weekend — following a dramatic week that saw progressive Democrats feeling empowered by convincing wins during last week’s elections, and moderate Democrats feeling like the shutdown could drag on for many weeks more.
The group of rank-and-file Democrats, who had been talking regularly for weeks with Republicans, finally took the GOP’s offer: reopen the government with a bipartisan funding bill, and get a vote on extending the Obamacare subsidies, as promised by Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.
The critical moment came Sunday, when those eight members of the Senate Democratic caucus broke ranks and joined Republicans to help the bill overcome the 60-vote filibuster. The Senate gave final passage to the legislation Monday evening.
Many Democrats slammed their colleagues for working with Republicans to end the standoff, arguing they caved. Some called for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to step aside — despite the fact he opposed the final deal and voted against it.
Although the deal includes a promised Senate vote on health care, there is no guarantee such a measure will pass the chamber, with the support of Senate Republicans needed to get such a measure over the line.
In the House, Johnson and his leadership team have offered no commitment to vote on extending the subsidies.
Final passage of the government funding bill was not without a last-minute hiccup in the House.
Senators included a provision in the bill that would give Republican senators who had their phone records collected without their knowledge — as part of Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election — the right to sue, allowing them to potentially collect $500,000 in damages.
But the provision received bipartisan backlash in the House, and Johnson ultimately agreed to advance separate legislation to undo the language.
“We are putting this legislation on the fast-track suspension calendar in the House for next week,” Johnson said.
