Eight Democrat-caucusing senators broke from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s demand to restore Obamacare subsidies and voted Sunday night to reopen the U.S. government after a shutdown that began on Oct. 1.
The deal, the Washington Times reported, would keep the government funded through January. While it doesn’t offer a promise that the Obamacare subsidies would be retained, a vote would be held next month under the agreement.
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The Senate deal replaces a continuing resolution bill passed by the House on Sept. 19, requiring the House to come back into session and return to Washington to vote on replacing it.
If the votes are there in the lower chamber, that means that — at the earliest — the government would reopen on Tuesday or Wednesday.
The 60-40 vote Sunday night, passed a little before 11 p.m. Eastern, garnered seven votes from Democrats and one from a Democrat-caucusing independent. One Republican — libertarian-leaning Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky — voted against the deal.
Sixty votes were needed to pass a resolution without the so-called “nuclear option,” which would likely have meant the end of the filibuster as we know it.
Of the Democrats who voted for it: Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Dick Durbin of Illinois, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Jackie Rosen of Nevada, and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire.
Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine, who caucuses with Democrats, similarly voted to keep the government open.
Trump was optimistic before the vote was taken: “It looks like we’re getting very close to the shutdown ending,” he said before the vote.
Shaheen, the lead negotiator for the Democrats who broke from Schumer, was more realistic about what it meant.
“This was the only deal on the table,” she said. “It was our best chance to reopen the government and immediately begin negotiations” on the Obamacare subsidies.
Furthermore, a clause in the spending package would not only rehire government workers laid off by the Trump administration during the shutdown but provide them with back pay. Those who have been furloughed or working without a paycheck will also, as per usual, receive their salaries once the government reopens.
There is still one major hurdle: The bill needs to pass the House, where the GOP has a slim majority. And, while there was a willingness of some Democrats to work with the GOP to reopen the government without the subsidies in place, Senate Minority Leader Schumer and others made it clear they found the deal unacceptable.
“I have been clear on this from the beginning: I will not turn my back on the 24 million Americans who will see their premiums more than double if we don’t extend these tax credits,” Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego said on social media.
Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy — considered an outsider possibility for the party’s 2028 presidential nomination — also posted a video to X in which he condemned those who joined the GOP in the vote.
“There’s no way to sugarcoat what happened tonight. And my fear is that Trump gets stronger, not weaker, because of this acquiescence,” he said in a caption to the video.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, also made clear that the new package would face opposition in the House.
“For seven weeks, Democrats in the House and Senate have waged a valiant fight on behalf of the American people,” he wrote in a statement. “It now appears that the Senate Republicans will send the House of Representatives a spending bill that fails to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits.”
He also attempted to pin the Democrats’ failure to reopen the government or renegotiate the tax credits — COVID-19 expanded benefits that cap out-of-pocket costs at 8.5 percent of household income for families earning less than 400 percent of the poverty level — on the White House.
“Donald Trump and the Republican Party own the toxic mess they have created in our own country and the American people know it,” Jeffries said.
Polling has been mixed, however, and hasn’t generally found that the American public blames Trump for the shutdown.
However, the Democrats did score larger-than-expected victories in off-year elections in states which tend to be blue strongholds. Particularly in Virginia, where a large number of federal employees live in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, the shutdown seemed to work to the Democrats’ advantage.
In the days leading up to the election, and just hours before polls closed, reports began to emerge that Senate Democrats were leaning toward working with the GOP to end the shutdown.
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Whatever the case, Schumer made it clear he was going to fight against the bill even after it was clear it had the votes to pass.
“This healthcare crisis is so severe, so urgent, so devastating for families back home that I cannot, in good faith, support this CR that fails to address the healthcare crisis,” Schumer said, according to Fox News, adding the Republicans “showed that they are against any health care reform.”
It’s also unclear what the vote will mean for Schumer’s future as minority leader. While he reenergized the liberal base with his hard-line negotiating tactics, his failure to shut down the government in response to another continuing resolution in the spring almost cost him his job, with several high-profile left-wing activist groups calling for him to step aside or be forced out.
This article originally appeared on The Western Journal, and is reposted with permission.
