The longest partial government shutdown in history ended late Wednesday night when President Donald Trump signed into law a short-term spending patch that funds federal agencies through January.
Flanked by House GOP leaders around his desk in the Oval Office, Trump signed the bill as he repeated his call for abolishing the Senate filibuster to avoid the risk of another shutdown.
“This is no way to run a country,” Trump said in signing the bill ending a 43-day partial shutdown. “I hope we can all agree the government should never be shut down again.”
The House sent Trump the legislation just hours earlier, when it voted to clear the measure on a 222-209 vote that fell mostly along party lines.
Two Republicans opposed the measure: Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Greg Steube of Florida. Six Democrats joined Republicans to push the bill to passage: Henry Cuellar of Texas, Don Davis of North Carolina, Jared Golden of Maine, Adam Gray of California, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, and Tom Suozzi of New York.
The package would fund the government through Jan. 30 and provide full-year appropriations for the departments of Agriculture and Veterans Affairs, along with legislative operations. It would also reverse thousands of layoffs of federal employees that the White House sought to implement during the shutdown, while preventing future mass layoffs at least through the end of January.
It also means that full benefits can resume in coming days for nearly 42 million low-income people who rely on food stamps, after a series of court challenges allowed the Trump administration to block full payments for November temporarily. And airports across the country that have coped with thousands of flight delays and cancellations can begin getting operations back on track as more air traffic controllers resume their duties.
House Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain, R-Mich., said Democrats “inflicted needless pain on hardworking Americans” and “got nothing” in the end. “Millions of Americans whose lives were upended by the Democratic shutdown will remember this,” she said.
The package buys Congress 11 more weeks to ramp up funding negotiations to complete work on fiscal 2026 spending bills. Three of the dozen annual bills have now been passed as a result of the measure headed to Trump’s desk: Agriculture, Military Construction-Va and Legislative Branch.
Democrats overwhelmingly rejected the package, which notably does not include what has been their top priority: an extension of the Affordable Care Act enhanced health insurance subsidies set to expire at year’s end. And while Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., promised to hold a vote next month in his chamber on the health subsidies, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has made no such commitment.
“This bill fails to address the fundamental needs of families across our country,” said Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Health care premiums are skyrocketing because Republicans refused to extend the ACA tax credits, causing health care costs to go up for everyone.”
Eager to continue their fight, House Democrats announced plans on Wednesday to use a so-called discharge petition to force floor consideration of legislation that would extend the subsidies for three years. But that effort requires Democrats to muster 218 signatures in support of the measure, and Republicans are unlikely to back any plan to extend the subsidies without changes.
