Breaking: House Votes to End Government Shutdown After 43 Days

Speaker Johnson spoke to the media before Wednesday's votes.
Reuters
By Yuval Rosenberg and Michael Rainey

Happy Wednesday! The longest government shutdown in U.S. history is about to end after nearly 43 full days. With the House of Representatives back and the government set to reopen, the political world is also picking up the story that had been dominating headlines before the shutdown began: the Epstein files. As that fight continues, lawmakers also have plenty of other work ahead of them, and the House will be scrambling to make up for the 54 days its members were out. Here's what you should know.

House Passes Bill to End Government Shutdown After 43 Days

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.

Trump to Cut Some Tariffs Amid Worries About Affordability

Stung by complaints that Americans face "affordability" issues, President Trump has vowed to reduce tariffs on a handful of basic products to provide relief from what some consumers see as a painfully high cost of living.

In an interview with Laura Ingraham of Fox News earlier this week, Trump again expressed frustration that Republicans aren't doing a better job selling his efforts to reduce prices and celebrating what he called "the greatest economy in history." At the same time, he admitted that the prices of some items, including beef and coffee, are too high, and said he was taking steps to bring those prices under control.

"We're going to take care of all this stuff very quickly, very easily," Trump told Ingraham. "It's surgical. It's beautiful to watch."

On Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the administration would soon move to ease prices on consumer items that have seen notable increases since Trump imposed tariffs on goods from major trading partners, including Brazil and Mexico.

"You're going to see some substantial announcements over the next couple of days in terms of things we don't grow here in the United States, coffee being one of them, bananas, other fruits, things like that," Bessent told Fox News. Bessent didn't specifically cite tariffs as the focus of the effort, but a Trump administration official told Bloomberg that the White House plans to cut tariffs on specific food items.

National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett also spoke about the White House's interest in reducing some tariffs. "One of the things that people have been talking about, just the last few days, is, you know, thinking about changing tariffs for foodstuffs," Hassett said Wednesday, adding that tariffs are "an ongoing process" in the administration.

Focus on 'affordability': In a sign that the White House is worried about economic issues that appear to have played a role in the defeats Republicans suffered in the elections last week, Bessent highlighted other ways that the Trump administration is addressing problems of affordability.

U.S. workers will start seeing higher wages "in the first quarter, second quarter, next year," Bessent said, as the Trump administration's policies finally start making people feel better about the "affordability mess" they inherited from the Biden administration. Tax refunds should provide a major boost in the spring of 2026, Bessent added, and lower withholding rates will contribute to higher take-home wages.

Asked about the $2,000 "dividend" payment from tariff revenues that Trump has floated, Bessent said "a lot of options" are under consideration. "The president is talking about a $2,000 rebate that would be for families making less than, say, $100,000," he said. However, no decision to issue the payments has been made yet, and there is no specific plan for how such a program might work.

After 232 Years, US Mints Its Last Penny

The last penny was minted on Wednesday after President Trump earlier this year ordered the Treasury Department to halt production as a cost-saving measure.

"In its heyday, the penny had immense cultural impact," The New York Times said in an obituary for the coin. "It was the going rate for thoughts. It was a symbol of frugality, saved and/or earned. It could sometimes be pretty and other times arrive from heaven. And how many ideas would never have come to light without a penny dropping?"

But pennies have long cost more to produce than they are worth, and the government had been spending more than three cents to make each of the one-cent coins, even as their purchasing power vanished. "When it was introduced in 1793, a penny could buy a biscuit, a candle or a piece of candy," the Associated Press noted. "Now most of them are cast aside to sit in jars or junk drawers."

The last few pennies are reportedly set to be auctioned off rather than go into circulation.

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