WASHINGTON — The Senate voted to advance a new bill to reopen the government Sunday evening, after a series of partisan meetings throughout the weekend reached a breakthrough. The continuing resolution was brokered by eight Senate Democrats, including New Hampshire Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, Maggie Hassan and Tim Kaine (D-Va.).
60 Senators voted in favor of the bill, which would extend government funding through Jan. 30, 2026.
Shaheen said Republicans had maintained that they would not meet with Democrats to hear their arguments about health care while the shutdown was still ongoing. She added that there was no positive outcome tied to prolonging the shutdown over rising health care costs.
“The clear statement from [Senate Majority Leader] Thune (R-S.D.) and the Republican majority—when they control the Senate, the House, the White House, was—‘we will not talk about health care with you,’” Shaheen said in a press conference late Sunday evening with Senate Democrats who voted to end the shutdown.
The resolution to reopen the government was drafted late last week and released Sunday evening, following a bill brought forward by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) to pay federal workers that failed to pass.
Republicans reportedly presented Democrats with a deal to vote on extending health care subsidies at a future date. The existing resolution would not extend subsidies for the Affordable Care Act.
The bill will be voted on formally today.
In order to reopen the government, the bill still needs to be passed by the House of Representatives and signed into law by President Donald Trump.
Kaine said he was a late supporter of the Democratic cohort, privately discussing a vote to reopen the government, after campaigning in Virginia for Democratic candidates last Tuesday.
He said the shutdown has had a rough impact on Americans relying on nutritional assistance programs, and it was too damaging to justify keeping the government closed.
“We were in a situation where SNAP recipients were suffering, and there was no guarantee we would ever get to an ACA solution,” he said in the press conference.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said that his caucus would not back down fighting against increased health care costs in a statement to the press Sunday evening.
“America is far too expensive. We will not support spending legislation advanced by Senate Republicans that fails to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits. We will fight the GOP bill in the House of Representatives, where [House Speaker] Mike Johnson will be compelled to end the seven week Republican taxpayer-funded vacation,” his statement says.
Thune said that he was relieved Democrats voted in favor of moving forward to reopen the government in his remarks on the Senate floor Monday morning.
“I’m glad to be able to say that eight Democrats joined Republicans last night to take the first step to reopen the government…all of us, Democrat and Republican, who voted for last night’s bill are well aware of the facts and I’m grateful that the end is in sight,” he said.
The bill’s progression in the Senate has drawn strong backlash from many members of Congress, who say that the eight Democrats who voted in favor of the resolution had sacrificed the party’s health care demands.
“With respect to the senators on the other side of the Capitol, they’re going to have to explain themselves,” Jeffries said in a press conference Monday morning.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) was one of the 40 senators who voted against moving forward with the bill, along with Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.).
“Democrats demanded that we find a way to fix this crisis and quick…but Republicans have refused to move an inch. So I cannot support the Republican bill that’s on the floor because it fails to do anything of substance to fix America’s health care crisis,” Schumer said in his remarks on the Senate floor Monday morning.
As it became clear that Democrats would soon vote to reopen the government, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told reporters that he disapproved of the bill, claiming that a vote of “yes” would be a capitulation.
“It would be a horrific mistake to cave in to Trump right now, the American people cannot afford a building of their health care premiums,” he said.
Sanders had previously expressed enthusiasm about Democrats’ wins throughout the country in last week’s elections, telling Medill News Service that their victories were a sign that the public disapproved of Trump and Republicans’ strategy with the shutdown.
“From coast to coast in small towns and big cities, people were saying no to Trumpism, and that included saying no to doubling healthcare premiums for over 20 million people and throwing 15 million people off of health care…Tuesday was a referendum on Trumpism and what the Republicans are trying to do on health care,” he said.
After the preliminary vote, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told reporters Democrats had “lost” the fight to protect health care for Americans relying on the ACA.
“I want to win the fight. I want Republicans to actually grow a backbone and say, ‘regardless of what Donald Trump says, we’re actually going to restore these cuts on health care.’ But it looks like I’ve lost that fight, so I don’t want to impose more pain on people who are hungry and on people who haven’t been paid,” she said.
Note: a previous edition of this article said that the vote to reopen the government had successfully passed, when in fact it was a motion to proceed.
