House passes funding bill to end historic government shutdown
Plus: Democrats send letters to Trump cabinet officials and Democratic governors on education funding, Trump’s beef policy and more.
FIRST THINGS FIRST
The House did something on Wednesday evening that it hadn’t in 54 days when it convened to vote on a bill to temporarily reopen the government and approve full-year funding across several federal departments and agencies.
The legislation is on its way to President Donald Trump’s desk to be signed into law, a move that will conclude the longest funding lapse in American history.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) kept most of his conference unified in support of the bill, with an assist from six vulnerable House Democrats, including Rep. Jared Golden (Maine), who’s retiring next year and voted for the spending measure the House passed mostly along party lines in mid-September. Reps. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.), Don Davis (N.C.), Henry Cuellar (Texas), Adam Gray (Calif.) and Tom Suozzi (N.Y.). rounded out the Democratic flips. All other Democrats plus Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Greg Steube (R-Fla.) opposed the bill.
The final vote was 222–209.
The bill includes a short-term continuing resolution that reopens the government at fiscal year 2025 funding levels through Jan. 30, 2026, giving appropriators a window to write the remaining nine spending bills for fiscal year 2026. It also includes a three-bill minibus that provides full-year funding for military construction and veterans programs, the Agriculture Department, the FDA and congressional operations.
The measure reverses all reduction-in-force actions taken during the shutdown, bars any new layoffs for the duration of the CR and guarantees back pay and benefits to affected federal employees. And while Democrats did not secure the extension of the Affordable Care Act enhanced premium tax credits, the agreement commits to a Senate vote by mid-December on a Democratic bill to extend those subsidies.
Finally, the legislation fully funds SNAP through the 2026 fiscal year, ensuring food-assistance programs remain uninterrupted even as the broader budget fight continues.
“There are only two ways that this fight will end: Either Republicans finally decide to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits this year or the American people will throw Republicans will throw Republicans out of their jobs next year—and end the speakership of Donald J. Trump once and for all,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said ahead of final passage. “That’s how this fight ends.
House Democratic leadership formally whipped against the bill—Washington-speak for officially encouraging their members to vote no. As I scooped in Monday’s edition, House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) criticized the bill on a private caucus call for excluding an ACA extension, failing to protect Congress’s power of the purse from the Trump administration’s attempts to claw back previously approved funds and omitting advance funding for the Toxic Exposure Fund, which was included in a previous version but stripped from the final. (She did point out a few Democratic victories in each of the three bills passed in the minibus.)
DeLauro said this morning that it was unprecedented that the so-called “Four Corners”—the top Democratic and Republican leaders on the House and Senate Appropriations Committees—did not sign off on the package. She told me she’s concerned Congress will be in the same position at the end of January when the new CR expires that it found itself in during this historic impasse.
“There really is a lack of trust” between the parties and chambers, she added.
The House adjourned for the week after the vote and will return on Monday. House Republican leadership announced on Tuesday that votes are now expected next Friday—an indication it plans to recoup the lost productivity from the eight-week shutdown recess with long days and extended weeks.