The longest government shutdown in U.S. history is almost over.
The House, back for its first votes since September 19, just passed the Senate’s bipartisan deal to reopen the government. The 222-209 vote saw six Democrats join with all but two Republicans to approve the bill.
The Democrats who broke ranks with their party were Henry Cuellar of Texas, Don Davis of North Carolina, Adam Gray of California, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, Jared Golden of Maine and Tom Suozzi of New York. Republicans Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Greg Steube of Florida voted against the bill.
The funding package now goes to President Donald Trump, who is set to sign it in the Oval Office this evening. Once the president scribbles his seismographic signature in black Sharpie on the legislation, the government will reopen for the first time since September 30.
“We believe the long national nightmare will be over tonight,” Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters earlier in the day, again blaming Democrats for the shutdown and the pain it caused. “We’re sorry that it took this long.”
Johnson called the shutdown “foolish, pointless, cruel, and entirely avoidable.”
The legislation provides full-year funding for the Agriculture Department, including SNAP food benefits, as well as the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Veterans Affairs, military construction projects and the legislative branch. All other agencies will be funded at prior levels through January 30, giving appropriators time to finish the remaining full-year spending bills. The bill will also guarantee back pay for the hundreds of thousands of federal workers who were furloughed of forced to work without compensation, reinstate thousands of federal workers fired by the Trump administration during the shutdown and prohibit future firings through the end of January.
The early 2026 funding deadline established by the bill also sets up another potential shutdown fight in less than three months’ time.
The speaker, who kept his members out of session for six weeks to pressure Democrats to accept the House-passed Republican plan to fund the government, said the House will be busy trying to make up for lost time. “There’ll be some long days and nights here, some long working weeks, but we will get this thing back on track,” Johnson said. Before that, though, the House is heading home for the weekend. Lawmakers will be back next week before taking their Thanksgiving break.
As normalcy returns to the Capitol, the Trump administration said it would send out full SNAP benefits within 24 hours of the government reopening, but it will still take time to fully fix the chaos at the nation’s airports and ameliorate some of the other pain of the shutdown — and longer still to address the projected surge in out-of-pocket premium costs for millions with Affordable Care Act health plans. That issue, which Democrats demanded be addressed in a deal to end the shutdown, remains unresolved, though Senate Republicans have promised a vote on a Democratic plan next month. Johnson has made no such promise in the House, leaving Democrats with no clear path to try to secure an extension of the higher subsidies. House Democratic leaders reportedly plan to file a discharge petition that, if it gets 218 signatures, would force a vote on a three-year extension of the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies.
House Republicans balk at Senate surprise: The Senate bill to end the shutdown included an unexpected provision in the measure funding the legislative branch. The addition, reportedly inserted by Republican Leader John Thune, that would allow senators to sue the U.S. government if their electronic records are obtained by federal investigators without their knowledge. If such suits are successful, the senators could be awarded as much as $500,000 or more for each violation.
The measure came after some GOP senators were outraged to learn that their phone records were subpoenaed as part of the special counsel investigation into the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. But some Democrats and House Republican hardliners were angered by the provision. “I do not think that this provision should have been inserted, it certainly shouldn’t have been inserted at the eleventh hour,” said Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas. “I think there’s going to be a lot of people, if they look and understand this, they’re going to see this as self-serving, self-dealing kind of stuff, and I don’t think that’s right.”
Johnson on Wednesday announced in a social media post that he will bring up standalone legislation to repeal the provision. “We are putting this legislation on the fast track suspension calendar in the House for next week,” Johnson wrote.