US Senate vote marks step towards ending federal shutdown | US federal government shutdown 2025

The U.S. Senate held a key vote Sunday on a bill that would end the record federal government shutdown without extending health care subsidies demanded by Democrats.

Senators began voting Sunday night to advance a stopgap funding bill passed by the House that Senate Majority Leader John Thune said would be amended to combine another short-term spending measure with a package of three full-year appropriations bills.

The package would still need to be passed by the House of Representatives and sent to Donald Trump for signature, a process that could take several days.

Senate Democrats have so far resisted efforts to reopen the government, aiming to pressure Republicans into agreeing to expand subsidies for health plans from the Affordable Care Act, which expire at the end of the year. Thune said that under the deal under consideration, the Senate would agree to hold a separate vote on the grants later.

Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic senator from Connecticut, told reporters he would vote against the funding measure but suggested there might be enough Democratic support to pass it.

“I am not willing to accept the vague promise of a vote at an unspecified time on an undefined measure extending health care tax credits,” Blumenthal said.

“The Senate could vote” on health insurance credits, said Ben Ray Luján, a New Mexico Democrat. “I’m going to emphasize “could”. But will President Johnson do anything? Will the president do anything?

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson previously said he would not vote on a plan to extend tax credits that make health insurance affordable for millions of Americans who are not insured by their employers.

Two leading progressives in the Senate Democratic caucus were even more dismissive of the emerging compromise. “It’s a mistake,” Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts told Punchbowl News. “It would be a political and policy disaster for Democrats to concede,” said Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

House Democrats expressed dismay. Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, vowed to fight the bill. “We will not support spending legislation advanced by Senate Republicans that fails to expand the Affordable Care Act tax credits. We will fight the GOP bill in the House of Representatives,” Jeffries said in a statement.

“A deal that does not reduce health care costs is a betrayal of the millions of Americans who count on Democrats to fight for them,” Greg Casar, a Texas Democrat who leads the House Progressive Caucus, wrote on X. “Republicans want cuts to health care. Accepting just one small promise from Republicans is not a compromise, it’s a capitulation. Millions of families would pay the price.”

“Unacceptable,” said Florida Congressman Maxwell Frost. “There are 189,000 people in my district who will pay 50-300% more for the same health care, and in many cases worse. I will not do that to the people I represent. I am NO to this ‘deal’.”

Democrats outside Washington have also denounced the compromise. “Pathetic. This is not a deal. This is a capitulation. Don’t bend the knee!” California Governor Gavin Newsom wrote on social media.

Sunday marked the 40th day of the shutdown, which has sidelined federal workers and affected food aid, parks and travel, while understaffed air traffic control threatens to derail travel during the busy Thanksgiving holiday period at the end of the month. Thom Tillis, a Republican senator from North Carolina, said the growing effects of the shutdown pushed the chamber toward a deal. He said the final piece, a new resolution that would fund government operations through the end of January, would also reverse at least part of the Trump administration’s mass layoffs of federal workers.

“The temperatures are getting colder, the air pressure is increasing outside and all of a sudden it looks like things are going to get better,” Tillis told reporters. If the government remains shut down longer, economic growth could turn negative in the fourth quarter, especially if air travel does not return to normal levels by Thanksgiving, White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett warned on CBS’ Face the Nation. Thanksgiving falls this year on November 27.

Americans shopping for Obamacare 2026 health insurance plans face a doubling of their monthly premiums on average, health experts estimate, with pandemic-era subsidies set to expire at the end of the year. Republicans on Friday rejected a proposal from Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to vote to reopen the government in exchange for a one-year extension of tax credits that would reduce the costs of plans under the Affordable Care Act, often called Obamacare.

Adam Schiff, a Democratic senator from California, said Sunday that he believes Trump’s health care proposal aims to gut the ACA and allow insurance companies to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.

“So the same insurance companies that he’s going after in these tweets, he’s saying, ‘I’m going to give you more power to cancel people’s insurance policies and not cover them if they have a pre-existing condition,'” Schiff said on ABC’s This Week.