Senate to hold 15th vote on ending record US government shutdown | US federal government shutdown 2025

The U.S. government shutdown looks set to extend into its seventh week, with the Senate expected to vote Friday on a Republican proposal to revive funding, but Democrats show no signs of abandoning their demands to expand health care subsidies.

The 38-day shutdown began October 1 and is already the longest in U.S. history and has caused unprecedented disruption to government programs.

Donald Trump’s White House attempted to suspend payments under the government’s food aid program for the first time in history, but was blocked by a court order. The Federal Aviation Administration also cut commercial air travel, saying weeks of unpaid work by controllers had undermined capacity. About 800 U.S.-bound flights were canceled Friday morning, according to tracking site FlightAware.

Yet Congress is showing every sign of stagnation, even as the Senate meets Friday morning for what could be the 15th vote on the Republican Party’s proposal to reopen the government.

Although Republicans control both houses of Congress, any spending bill requires at least some bipartisan support to clear the 60-vote threshold for advancement in the Senate. The Republican Party has for weeks demanded that Democrats support a bill to reopen the government through Nov. 21, without making major policy changes.

But after 14 attempts, only three Democratic senators broke with their party to vote for the bill, which the House of Representatives approved in September, almost along party lines.

“Democrats caused this shutdown by rejecting a clear, nonpartisan funding resolution,” John Thune, the Republican majority leader in the Senate, said Thursday.

“Republicans weren’t asking them to swallow a bunch of new conservative policies. There’s not a single partisan policy in the bill. And yet Democrats couldn’t bring themselves to take yes for an answer.”

Democrats insist that any funding bill include an expansion of tax credits that reduce premiums for enrollees in Affordable Care Act health plans. The credits, which were passed under President Joe Biden, expire at the end of the year, and beneficiaries of these plans are soon expected to see their costs increase by an average of 26%, the Kaiser Family Foundation found.

Democrats’ position was strengthened Tuesday when the party’s candidates won off-year elections in a number of states, which party leaders attributed to voters accepting their demands.

“High-cost Americans fired a political torpedo at Donald Trump and the Republicans this week,” the Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, said Thursday.

“If the Republicans were smart, they would understand after Tuesday that their strategy of doing nothing is not working. Even Donald Trump knows that Americans hold the Republicans responsible for this mess.”

Recent polls have shown that the Republican Party was more to blame for the shutdown than Democrats.

Trump appeared to recognize this dynamic, telling his party’s senators on Wednesday that the shutdown was “negative for Republicans.”

He then called on them to vote to abandon the Senate filibuster, which allows the minority party to block most bills that don’t get 60 votes. Thune said his lawmakers did not support such a move.