Senate Takes Key Vote Toward Ending Government Shutdown

The deal that split Democrats doesn’t extend expiring ACA subsidies. If a bill passes the Senate, it needs the House to approve and President Donald Trump on board.

November 9, 2025 at 10:50 p.m. EST

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) addresses reporters on Capitol Hill on Friday. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

By Theodoric Meyer, Riley Beggin and Mariana Alfaro

A key group of Senate Democrats joined Republicans on Sunday night to advance an agreement to end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.

After bipartisan negotiators struck a deal during a rare weekend session, seven Democratic senators and Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) voted with almost all of the chamber’s Republicans to take the first step toward reopening the government. Sunday’s vote, which needed 60 votes to pass, is the first of many that will be necessary to pass the agreement in the upper chamber.

But the deal split the party. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) came out against it.

“This health care crisis is so severe, so urgent, so devastating for families back home that I cannot in good faith support this CR,” Schumer said on the Senate floor, referring to the bill, known as a continuing resolution.

Most rank-and-file Democrats also opposed the deal.

“I think it’s a terrible mistake,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) told reporters as she left a closed-door meeting of Senate Democrats that lasted more than two hours Sunday evening. “The American people want us to stand and fight for health care, and that’s what I believe we should do.”

The bipartisan compromise combines three full-year funding measures into one package with a stopgap funding bill that would reopen the government through Jan. 30.

But the deal would not extend Affordable Care Act subsidies set to expire at the end of the year, which Democrats have warned will cause health insurance premiums to skyrocket for millions of Americans.

Instead, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) committed to holding a separate vote on legislation to extend the subsidies by the second week of December, after the government reopens.

“After 40 long days, I’m hopeful that we can finally bring the shutdown to an end,” Thune said Sunday night on the Senate floor.

The promise to vote on ACA subsidies at a later date is unlikely to be enough for most House Democrats, who have demanded that Republicans agree to extend the subsidies before they agree to reopen the government. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) has not committed to holding a vote on a bill to extend the subsidies, which many Republicans would prefer to see expire.

While some Republicans have said they are open to negotiating on extending ACA subsidies once Democrats agree to end the shutdown, President Donald Trump has appeared skeptical. He proposed over the weekend to redirect funding away from health insurers and toward average Americans.

The agreement aims to reverse more than 4,000 federal layoffs the Trump administration attempted to implement earlier in the shutdown. It also includes language that would prevent future layoffs through Jan. 30 in a federal workforce reeling from tens of thousands of layoffs earlier this year. Lawmakers would also appropriate funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP or food stamps, through September 2026.

Democratic Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (Nevada), Tim Kaine (Virginia), Dick Durbin (Illinois), John Fetterman (Pennsylvania), Maggie Hassan (New Hampshire), Jacky Rosen (Nevada) and Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire) voted to support the deal, as did King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats.

“I understand that not all of my Democratic colleagues are satisfied with this agreement,” Shaheen, who negotiated the deal with King and Hassan, told reporters. “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.”

King acknowledged that it did not give Democrats everything they wanted. But he told reporters he believed there was no possibility that Republicans would agree to extend ACA subsidies as long as the government remained shut down, while there was perhaps a 50-50 chance of negotiating an extension once the government reopened.

“I would take a reasonable chance against no chance every day,” King said.

Kaine, who pushed for the provisions to reverse federal layoffs, said he did not reach a final agreement with Senate Republicans on language barring the administration from firing federal workers en masse until about 5:45 p.m. Sunday.

There was a lot of resistance — but they needed my vote,” Kaine told reporters. Earlier Sunday, he said the legislation would “protect federal workers from baseless firings, reinstate those who have been wrongfully terminated during the shutdown, and ensure federal workers receive back pay, as required by a law I got passed in 2019.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Trump would support the deal. But Trump suggested the proposal could end the shutdown.

“It looks like we’re getting close to the shutdown ending,” Trump told reporters Sunday night. “We’ll know very soon.”

It could take days for a final bill to move through the Senate. The House has been out of session since Sept. 19 and would also need to come back to Washington and vote on the measure.

Republicans control the Senate 53-47 but needed the support of Democrats to reopen the government. It takes 60 votes to break a filibuster, meaning at least eight Democrats needed to vote yes because Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) voted no.

As news began to break that a deal was in the works, Jeffries and other House Democrats began to voice opposition to the agreement’s framing.

“We will fight the GOP bill in the House of Representatives, where Mike Johnson will be compelled to end the seven week Republican taxpayer-funded vacation,” Jeffries said in a statement Sunday evening.

“A deal that doesn’t reduce health care costs is a betrayal of millions of Americans counting on Democrats to fight for them,” Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, wrote on X. “Accepting nothing but a pinky promise from Republicans isn’t a compromise — it’s capitulation.”

Costs for health care insurance offered through HealthCare.gov and state-run marketplaces under the Affordable Care Act have risen since open enrollment started Nov. 1 because these subsidies will expire at the end of the year.

But Republicans might not need Democratic votes to get the bill through the House. Republicans will control the House 219 to 214 when Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-Arizona) is sworn in.

Schumer said Friday that his caucus would vote to reopen the government in exchange for a one-year extension of the subsidies — a proposal Republicans rejected.

Meanwhile, Trump and White House budget director Russell Vought have shifted money to pay troops and law enforcement officers, which experts say appears to run afoul of Congress’s constitutional purview over spending.

Americans are starting to face more pressure points as the shutdown drags on, as it has put millions at risk of food insecurity and disrupted flights nationwide.

The Trump administration over the weekend ordered states to stop distributing full food assistance benefits for November to the 42 million low-income Americans at risk of food insecurity — stretching out an ongoing fight between the federal government and states.

Hundreds of thousands of federal workers have been left without pay for nearly six weeks. And help lines at the Social Security Administration and Internal Revenue Service have gone silent as those workers are furloughed, with field offices that provide services for small-business owners, farmers and ranchers, and veterans shuttered.

More Americans blame Trump and congressional Republicans for the shutdown than they do Democrats, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll conducted in late October.

Last week, Trump blamed bruising election losses for the GOP partly on the ongoing shutdown, saying the GOP should do what it can to get the government open as soon as possible, including abolishing the filibuster in the Senate. But he continued to try to place blame on Democrats for the government being shuttered.

Jacob Bogage contributed to this report.