Senate Kicks Off Series of Votes to End Shutdown

Lots happening under the Capitol dome today.
Reuters
By Yuval Rosenberg and Michael Rainey

Happy Monday! The Senate is taking a series of votes tonight to reopen the government. It took 40 days, but senators on Sunday cleared a path to end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history via a deal that is deeply dividing Democrats and leaves the Affordable Care Act subsidies at the heart of the standoff very much in doubt. Let's look at where things stand.

Senate Kicks Off Series of Votes to End Shutdown

The longest government shutdown in U.S. history is on track to end this week, after a group of eight centrist Democrats broke ranks with party leaders and helped advance a bipartisan deal to reopen federal agencies. The agreement also sets up a vote next month to address healthcare subsidies set to expire at the end of the year.

Sunday's 60-40 vote cleared a major procedural hurdle, setting the stage for a series of additional votes that began Monday evening, after an objection from Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky was resolved. The Senate votes could conclude before the night is over, but it will still take days to reopen the government, and the timing of final passage of the agreement in the House remains uncertain.

President Donald Trump said he would sign the legislation once it reaches his desk. "I'll abide by the deal. The deal is very good," Trump told reporters Monday.

What's in the deal: As a key part of the agreement, Senate Republicans promised to hold a vote by the second week of December on a Democratic bill to extend the expiring Obamacare subsidies - essentially the same offer Senate Majority Leader John Thune presented to Democrats weeks ago.

The deal would also:

  • Fund the government through January 30;
  • Advance three full-year appropriations bills covering military construction, Veterans Affairs, the Department of Agriculture and the legislative branch;
  • Fund SNAP benefits for all of fiscal year 2026;
  • Reinstate federal workers fired by the Trump administration during the shutdown and prohibit future layoffs through January 30;
  • Guarantee backpay for furloughed workers.

What's not in the deal: There's no promise from Republicans that the Senate vote on the ACA subsidies will succeed - or that the House will hold a vote on the measure at all. Also, the deal does not include new restrictions on the Trump administration's ability to claw back funding without congressional approval.

Democrats divided and angry: The eight members of the Democratic caucus to support the deal were Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen of Nevada, Dick Durbin of Illinois, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Tim Kaine of Virginia, and Angus King of Maine, an independent. None of the eight will be running for re-election next year.

The decision by those Democrats to help end the shutdown ignited a furious backlash from some members of the party and drew widespread condemnation from the progressive base. Critics were incensed that senators would "cave" just days after Democrats posted stronger-than-expected election victories that many saw as evidence that the party should continue its shutdown fight. After all, Trump himself had said after the elections that the shutdown was worse for Republicans than for Democrats. Cutting a deal now, Democratic critics warned, would only fritter away the momentum those election wins had generated.

"The people were on our side," Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy said in a post on X Monday. "We were building momentum to help save our democracy. We could have won - the premium increase notices were just starting. And giving in now will embolden [President Trump]. Things will likely get worse."

Party activists said the deal would only embolden Trump and Republicans. "Caving now will teach Trump and Republicans that they can win any fight simply by threatening to cause terrible harm to regular people," Leah Greenberg, co-executive director of the progressive group Indivisible, wrote on social media.

Many Democrats also complained that the promise of a Senate vote on some bill to extend the ACA tax credits was meaningless.

"A wink and a nod to deal with this health care crisis later - with no actual guarantees - is just not enough for me or the Wisconsin families I work for," Sen. Tammy Baldwin said.

Rep. Ritchie Torres said the deal means working families will face a shocking rise in healthcare costs: "It's an unconditional surrender that abandons the 24 million Americans whose health care premiums are about to double."

Rep. Greg Casar of Texas, who heads the House Progressive Caucus, blasted the agreement. "A deal that doesn't reduce health care costs is a betrayal of millions of Americans counting on Democrats to fight for them," he wrote on X. "Republicans want health care cuts. Accepting nothing but a pinky promise from Republicans isn't a compromise - it's capitulation."

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer voted against the deal and insisted that Democrats had succeeded in putting the healthcare issue on the national agenda and will continue to push for increased affordability. "We are going to fight legislatively, fight back home, fight in the courts, and bring this fight in the elections," said on the Senate floor Sunday night. "Healthcare costs made a major impact on the 2025 election, and they will certainly have an even greater impact on the 2026 election."

But the centrists' deal also revived criticisms of Schumer, with some in the party complaining that the divisions among Senate Democrats showed that the leader couldn't keep his members unified and should be replaced.

The centrists defended their decision: The Democrats voting for the deal said it was clear after 40 days - and especially after Senate Republicans universally opposed a compromise proposal from Schumer last week - that the current strategy wasn't working and wasn't going to work.

Some reportedly indicated that Trump's position influenced their thinking. Trump was increasingly vocal in opposing an extension of the ACA subsidies, making it much harder for congressional Republicans to back such a move.

Trump also never fully engaged in talks to end the shutdown. He traveled to the Middle East and Asia and then, after he returned home, he pushed Senate Republicans to eliminate the filibuster. While the Senate was in over the weekend, Trump went to his Mar-a-Lago home, played golf and then returned north to attend the Washington Commanders football game (where he swore in military members and got booed mercilessly by the crowd). In short, the president gave no indication that he would pressure Republican congressional leaders to strike a deal, as Democrats had hoped.

"Republicans control the White House, the Senate and the House and they made clear over a period of weeks, including just this week, that this was as far as they would go as part of the shutdown talks," Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire told reporters. "This was the only deal on the table. It was our best chance to reopen the government and immediately begin negotiations to extend the ACA tax credits that tens of millions of Americans rely on to keep costs down."

Shaheen and other Democrats backing the deal insisted that allowing the shutdown to continue would not have led to a more favorable outcome. "I understand not all of my Democratic colleagues are satisfied with this agreement," Shaheen said, "but waiting another week or another month wouldn't deliver a better outcome. It would only mean more harm for families in New Hampshire and all across the country."

Sen. Angus King, the Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats, said there was no evidence that Republicans would budge, while there was plenty of evidence that the shutdown was creating hardships for millions of Americans. The deal, he and others argued, will increase the chances that Congress does something to address the expiring healthcare subsidies.

"This agreement tonight is a win for the American people," King said.

What happens now: On the Senate side, the chamber's rules require 30 hours of debate after a cloture vote like the one Sunday night, though senators can unanimously agree to speed up that clock. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky on Monday objected to speeding up the Senate process until he was granted a vote on an amendment to strike a provision in the funding package that he said would harm his state's hemp industry. (Paul was also the only Republican to vote against the GOP's stopgap funding bill.)

Senate passage of the funding deal will send the package to the House, where it still could face challenges as Republican hardliners bristle at some elements. Trump may have to apply some pressure to ensure enough Republican support. House Democrats will mostly oppose the deal, though a few may vote for it. Speaker Mike Johnson said Monday that he will give House members 36 hours' notice after the Senate passes the bill. "All my colleagues, Republicans and Democrats in the House, you need to begin right now returning to the Hill," Johnson said. "We need to do this as quickly as possible."

We could still be headed for another shutdown: The temporary extension of current funding expires at the end of January, and Democrats could still look to shut the government down again starting in February if they are unhappy with the progress made on their healthcare priorities or the full-year funding process. Shaheen on Sunday left the door open to that possibility.

The bottom line: The process of reopening the government may be bumpy - ongoing air travel disruptions may mean some House lawmakers will struggle to get to the Capitol quickly - but the shutdown is expected to end within days. Whether its political impact will extend until next year's elections is unclear and could depend on how the healthcare fight plays out next month and beyond.

Trump Admin Renews Effort to Halt Full SNAP Payments

The Trump administration on Monday pressed ahead in its effort to prevent states from paying full nutritional benefits for the month of November, despite the deal advancing in Congress that would fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in full and could render the issue moot in a matter of days.

Late Friday, the Supreme Court granted the administration's request to halt full SNAP payments, pausing a lower court order that allowed November benefits to start flowing in some states. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson sent the case back to a lower court to consider, and late Sunday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit denied the administration's request to halt payments.

The Trump administration is challenging that ruling, and the Supreme Court is expected to rule on Tuesday. Payments remain frozen until that time.

Calling for clawbacks: Over the weekend, while the courts were still wrestling with the issue, the Trump administration demanded that states "undo" any full payments that had been made, while threatening penalties for noncompliance.

"To the extent States sent full SNAP payment files for November 2025, this was unauthorized," a Department of Agriculture official wrote to state SNAP directors. "Accordingly, States must immediately undo any steps taken to issue full SNAP benefits for November 2025."

It's not clear if the administration's demand applies to states that used their own funds to make up the difference between the partial benefits provided by the federal government and the full amount scheduled to be paid. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said it would be "shocking" if the directive applied to her state, which started to pay SNAP benefits in full using state funds.

"It's one thing if the federal government is going to continue its level of appeal through the courts to say, no, this can't be done," Murkowski said. "But when you are telling the states that have said this is a significant enough issue in our state, we're going to find resources, backfill or front load, whatever term you want, to help our people, those states should not be penalized."

Also on Monday, a federal judge in Massachusetts ordered a temporary block to the Trump administration's directive to undo SNAP payments made in full.

Trump Promises $2,000 'Dividend' Checks From Tariff Revenues

President Trump vowed Sunday to send at least $2,000 to most Americans, drawing on the revenues produced by his unilaterally imposed tariffs on imports from countries around the world.

"People that are against Tariffs are FOOLS!" Trump said on his social media platform. "We are now the Richest, Most Respected Country In the World, With Almost No Inflation, and A Record Stock Market Price. ... A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone."

In addition to the promised checks, Trump said he has found another use for the revenues: "We are taking in Trillions of Dollars and will soon begin paying down our ENORMOUS DEBT, $37 Trillion."

The administration argued just last week in front of the Supreme Court that revenues were an incidental result of the tariffs, which the solicitor general said have been put in place as part of Trump's diplomatic strategy. But that didn't prevent Trump from once again highlighting - and grossly exaggerating - the fiscal effects of the tariffs.

Math challenges: Trump has repeatedly talked up the "trillions" that are "pouring into" the country - phrasing that implies that the tariff revenues are coming from foreign sources. But tariffs are essentially a domestic tax paid by U.S. importers, with the cost largely passed onto consumers, so any "dividends" from the revenues would be more like rebates, reimbursing Americans for the higher prices produced by the historically high tariff rates.

In terms of available funds, it's unlikely that the tariff revenue could cover the cost of sending $2,000 checks to most Americans, though much depends on how such a program would be designed.

Philanthropist John Arnold did some back-of-the-envelope calculations that produced an estimated cost of more than half a trillion dollars. "Cost of proposed $2000 tariff dividend: 270 million people in US over 18 * $2000 - 5% (?) deemed rich = $513 billion," he wrote on X. If children were included, too, the cost would rise to $660 billion.

According to Erica York of the Tax Foundation, Trump's new tariffs have produced about $120 billion in additional revenue so far, above what would have been collected from pre-Trump tariff rates. York estimates that the Trump tariffs will produce about $217 billion in revenue in 2026, though some estimates put that number closer to $300 billion.

As for the idea that the revenues will start producing budget surpluses that can be used to reduce the federal debt, the Manhattan Institute's Jessica Riedl said it's "completely detached from reality."

"It's like announcing that 2+2=purple," Riedl added.

Political challenges: Trump cannot issue checks on his own, and there doesn't appear to be a coordinated political effort to send out money at the moment.

Asked about Trump's idea this weekend, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said there is no formal proposal for providing "dividend" checks. He also suggested that the payments could simply be the payoff from Republicans' big tax bill.

"[T]he $2,000 dividend could come in lots of forms, in lots of ways," Bessent told ABC News. "It could be just the tax decreases that we are seeing on the president's agenda - no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security, deductibility on auto loans."

Still, with Republicans in complete control of Washington, there's a chance that Trump could try to push a rebate plan through a Congress that tends to embrace his whims. Such a huge expenditure may not go well with some lawmakers, though.

"I don't see Republicans, especially in the House, going along with this," Republican strategist Susan Del Percio told MSNBC. "It just doesn't work for the financial controls that the House wants to have on big spending."

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