The US Senate concluded voting on Sunday evening to advance legislation that would reopen the government, after a critical bloc of Democratic senators gave their approval. With the support of eight Democrats, Republicans received the minimum number of votes to pass a compromise spending package that would fund most federal agencies through January — a move that could end weeks of stalemate that led to a 40-day government shutdown. This is an initial vote, but it paves the way for the agreement to begin being processed in Congress. The project will still need to be discussed and approved again in the Senate, then in the House of Representatives, and finally signed by President Donald Trump to end the strike.
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The initial vote, approved by 60 to 40, during a rare Sunday session, paved the way for the agreement to begin being processed in Congress. The project will still need to be discussed and approved in the Senate, then in the House of Representatives, and finally signed by President Donald Trump to end the strike.
Democrats’ main demand in the fight against the government shutdown was to extend health insurance subsidies from the Affordable Care Act, which expire at the end of the year, a topic not addressed in the agreement voted on today. In the plenary session, during the vote on Sunday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune stated that he is committed to Democrats to hold a vote on extending Health Access Act subsidies until the second week of December. However, the end of the shutdown will leave a bitter taste for many Democrats.
Republicans, who control 53 votes in the Senate, have tried unsuccessfully in recent weeks to convince enough Democrats to pass the stopgap spending bill. So far, they have received the support of just three members of the Democratic caucus — not enough to reach the 60-vote threshold needed to move forward.
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In a statement explaining his support for the deal, Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat, cited air traffic controllers who have been working without pay and the uncertainty surrounding federal food assistance benefits since the beginning of the shutdown.
With a potential deal looming, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, said he would vote to reopen the government after securing a provision in a short-term spending bill to return laid-off federal employees to their jobs and ensure they get back pay.
“This legislation will protect federal employees from wrongful termination, reinstate those who were wrongfully terminated during the shutdown, and ensure federal employees receive back pay as required by the law I passed in 2019,” Kaine said in a statement. “This is a crucial step.”
The core of the deal that has emerged in the Senate is a spending package — quietly negotiated by moderates in both parties — that includes a new stopgap measure to fund the government through January, as well as three separate spending measures to cover programs related to agriculture, military construction and legislatures through most of 2026.
Senate Budget Committee leaders on Sunday released the stopgap funding measure, which includes provisions Democrats have been quietly pushing to reverse President Trump’s federal layoffs during the government shutdown and prevent more mass layoffs through January. The three individual spending bills delete most of the deep cuts Trump proposed in his budget this year.
Trump’s proposal, for example, would have eliminated the Food for Peace program, which sends surplus American crops to communities affected by hunger and famine around the world. The Senate legislation allocates US$1.2 billion (R$6.4 billion) to the program, which many Republicans from important agricultural states are championing.
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Senate negotiators also rejected a proposal from House Republicans to cut in half funding for the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a century-old agency created to help Congress monitor federal spending. The Government Accountability Office has ruled seven times this year that Trump’s actions violate rules that prevent him from unilaterally canceling funding, and the agency is allowed under current law to sue the president and force him to release illegally withheld funds.
Instead, the senators responsible for allocating the money proposed leaving GAO funding intact and eliminating a provision proposed by their colleagues in the House that seeks to prevent the agency from suing the White House in the future.
Democrats have spent weeks demanding that Republicans agree to permanently extend health insurance subsidies in exchange for their votes to fund the government, but the GOP has refused to meet that condition. On Friday, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, scaled back that requirement, saying Democrats would vote to reopen the government if the legislation included extending health care tax credits for just one year. Republicans immediately rejected the proposal, considering it not possible.
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As details of the potential deal became clearer Sunday night, Democrats across the ideological spectrum were already voicing serious concerns. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who sides with Democrats, said as he entered the session that a vote to reopen the government without a guaranteed extension of health care support “would be a political disaster.”
Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a Democrat who was initially involved in the bipartisan negotiations, was also unhappy with the decision.
– I have always said that we need to do something concrete about health, and it is difficult to understand how this happened – she said.
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