President Donald Trump displays the signed funding bill to reopen the U.S. government on Wednesday.Jacquelyn Martin/The Associated Press
The longest federal government shutdown in United States history came to an end Wednesday night, as President Donald Trump signed legislation to restore services after 43 days of disruption.
His signature capped a night in which Republicans used their majority in the House of Representatives to narrowly pass a deal that restores the flow of government funds until Jan. 30 and reverses federal layoffs that happened during the shutdown.
Two Republican representatives rejected the bill, although it won the support of six House Democrats. They joined eight members of the Democratic Senate caucus who struck a deal earlier this week that includes funding food-stamp payments for a year under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, guaranteeing back pay to all federal workers and providing assurances that money will keep flowing through 2026 to veterans, farmers and legislative services.
But it does not extend health care subsidies that will, absent other legislation, expire at the end of this year, raising the cost of benchmark insurance for the roughly 22 million Americans who rely on coverage under the Affordable Care Act, which is also known as Obamacare.
Senate Republican Majority Leader John Thune promised only to allow a vote on extending those subsidies.
Reuters
The disappearance of the subsidies will raise premiums from nothing to US$378 a year for households at the bottom end of the income scale, with earnings of US$18,000 or less. A 60-year-old couple with US$85,000 in household income, meanwhile, would see a $22,635 rise in annual costs, based on the loss of the enhanced premium credit as well as increased premium costs.
Mikie Sherrill, a New Jersey Democrat who will soon leave the House after being elected governor of that state, pleaded with congressional colleagues to “not let this body become a ceremonial stamp to an administration that takes food away from children and rips away health care.”
Analysis: The end of the U.S. government shutdown is the result of a fraught compromise
House Republicans dismissed those charges, saying the only looming change is a reversion to normal. The soon-to-expire subsidies were temporary pandemic measures, said Michelle Fischbach, a Minnesota Republican.
“The Affordable Care Act’s original subsidies will remain in place,” she said. Resuming the function of the federal government, she added, will provide scope to legislate meaningful changes to the cost of health care.
“We have to actually sit down and have those discussions,” she said. “And that’s what getting the government back open will do.”
House Democrats, however, mounted a new attempt to defeat the deal, criticizing a provision that authorizes U.S. senators to sue federal authorities who search their phone records without notification. The records of eight Republicans were secretly obtained during an investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol building.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican who is among that group, said on Wednesday that he would use the provision to seek a major financial payout.
“Definitely,” he said. “And if you think I’m going to settle this thing for a million dollars? No. I want to make it so painful no one ever does this again.”
Democrats in the House seized on that comment, accusing senators of using the reopening measure to pad their own pockets.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat, called it a “slush fund for senators bill.”
“This legislation guarantees only two things,” she added. “Republican senators suspected of helping Trump try to steal an election will get a whole lot richer, and life will get more expensive for everyone else.”
Opinion: In Zohran Mamdani, Democrats may have found their Trump-slayer
Republicans, however, stood firm in supporting the reopening of government, accusing their political opponents of engineering the shutdown for their own benefit.
“The vote today, it is straight up or straight down,” said Austin Scott, a Georgia Republican. “You vote to open the government up today or you vote to keep it closed. That’s all there is to it.”
Mr. Scott said he had introduced legislation to repeal the Senate provision on suing over phone-records searches. That could come to a vote after passage of the reopening measure.
Texas Democrat Al Green questioned the logic of that legislative timeline.
“I refuse to take a poison pill and have you tell me that I will regurgitate it next week,” he said.
Democrats have been buoyed by a series of East Coast electoral victories last week, including in New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial votes. Hakeem Jeffries, the party’s House leader, warned that if health care subsidies are not extended, “the American people will throw Republicans out of their jobs next year.”
Republicans, however, ceded little political ground to Democrats, whose party has fractured into bitter infighting after the reopening deal struck earlier in the week.
Over the past 43 days, what changed was not the way forward, but “the level of pain Democrats inflicted on the nation,” said Oklahoma Republican Tom Cole.
“For six long weeks, Americans have paid the price for a shutdown they neither caused nor deserved.”