Lawmakers in the Senate cut a deal Sunday evening to end a federal government shutdown, but the path ahead remained unclear given the lack of involvement of either the White House or Republican leadership in the House of Representatives.
Eight moderate Democrats got on board with an agreement backed by their GOP colleagues that would extend government funding through the end of January while further negotiations take place on a range of issues, including subsidies for Affordable Care Act health plans, multiple news outlets reported Sunday evening.
The tentative deal would put a vote on the calendar next month to extend those subsidies for one year, while also handing Democrats a small win by reversing a series of layoffs the White House directed in October as a means of heaping pressure on the president’s political enemies. It would also block future layoffs planned by the administration, another coup for the president’s rivals. It will still require passage by the House, and the president’s signature, to become law.
Whether Republican leadership outside of the Senate was on board with these concessions wasn’t totally clear, but in the Senate, Republican leadership was optimistic.
Administration officials, who flatly refused to negotiate with Democrats while the government is shut down, were reportedly on board, but there wasn’t a clear sign that the deal had the backing of Speaker Mike Johnson in the House. Senate Majority Leader John Thune told a reporter on Sunday: “I am confident that if we move to open the government, the House will do likewise.”
Earlier Sunday, President Donald Trump was trashing the Affordable Care Act on Truth Social and insisting that Republicans would come up with a better plan. But his Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, made clear that this wasn’t really on the table, and that there was no “formal” proposal from the administration. Republicans in Congress, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, have been plainspoken about the failure of their party to come up with one after the 2017 Obamacare repeal effort went down in flames.
It “looks like we’re getting very close,” Trump told reporters on Sunday evening. “It looks like we’re getting very close to the shutdown ending.”
Axios separately reported that other issues were also being discussed, including efforts by Democrats to block future layoffs directed by the White House. Of the Democratic caucus, Sens. Dick Durbin, John Fetterman, Catherine Cortez Masto, Jacky Rosen, Jeanne Shaheen, Maggie Hassan, Angus King and Tim Kaine all voted for the resolution.
Centrist Democrats believe that Republicans in the Senate will be pressured to vote for the Democratic proposal to extend Obamacare subsidies in December, or risk a second shutdown in January — the beginning of the election year. Progressives in their party, as well as many other rank-and-file Democrats who disagreed with the strategy of their aging caucus members in the Senate, expressed serious doubt in the possibility of that vote ever passing.
Many in the party were furious on Sunday that Democrats in their party had backed down without the subsidies being passed outright, certain that they were now all but off the table entirely.
Polling has shown that Americans blame Republicans and Trump more than Democrats for the shutdown, while a clean sweep by Democrats in several highly-watched statewide elections last week gave the opposition party the headwinds to continue putting pressure on the GOP.
But it was moderate Democrats, in the end, who buckled first under that pressure, fearful of the damage caused by mounting issues around staffing at the nation’s airports and the instability of SNAP funding under a shutdown.
Speaker Mike Johnson continues to hold the House of Representatives in recess, while he avoids negotiating with Democrats to end the shutdown or convening the chamber and swearing in a newly-elected Democratic congresswoman. By doing so, Johnson has also kept an embarrassing vote on releasing the Epstein files (which would be successful, with Democratic and a few Republican votes already locked in) from passing in the lower chamber.
Senate Democrats were set to meet as a caucus late Sunday afternoon, with the chamber in a rare weekend session, to discuss the proposal. Progressives railed against the compromise, accusing their colleagues of betraying their constituents, while DNC chair Ken Martin came out against the deal as well. In a possible sign of how Democrats viewed the importance of the vote, both of Georgia’s vulnerable Democratic senators opposed it.
Trump, who has come under fire for not meeting with Democrats despite his own past insistence that it is the president’s responsibility to do so in such situations, continues to largely refrain from direct involvement — making it potentially more likely that he would sign on to any deal Republican congressional leaders felt was appropriate.
Axios reported that administration officials were on board with the deal but had been resistant to giving Congress the power to block future layoffs.
At the same time, Trump has added fuel to the fire with a number of proposals that don’t seem to have gone through the consultation process with his own allies on the Hill, including his call for a new Obamacare replacement effort as well as his demand that the Senate scrap the 60-vote filibuster threshold to end the shutdown. Republican leaders are fearful of the latter suggestion, which would allow Democrats to pass legislation with the same simple-majority threshold if the chamber changed hands in 2027.
Politico reported that House Democrats are unhappy with the emerging framework of the deal, given that it doesn’t guarantee the passage of Obamacare subsidies. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries seemed to confirm that on NBC’s Meet the Press.
“I don’t think that the House Democratic Caucus is prepared to support a promise, a wing and a prayer from folks who have been devastating the healthcare of the American people for years,” he said.
Many in the lower chamber worry that giving the appearance of backing down, in the wake of Tuesday’s elections, will infuriate many Democratic voters and supercharge primary campaigns against their members next year. After the vote passed, Rep. Ro Khanna of California, a progressive Democrat, called on his party to replace Chuck Schumer as leader of the Senate Democratic Caucus. Similarly, at least two of the party’s candidates for the U.S. Senate, Mallory McMorrow in Michigan and Zach Wahls in Iowa, called for new leadership in the caucus as well.
One of those winning Democrats, Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday: “Our victory was based on a campaign addressing concerns related to costs and chaos. Virginians need to — and Virginians want to — see the government reopen.”
Republican Maine Sen. Susan Collins told the outlet that the vote was going to be “close,” but added that she was hopeful this breakthrough would finally end a federal government shutdown that has now lasted nearly 40 days.