39 days and 20 hours had passed since the start of the longest partial government shutdown in US history when the spark of an agreement was lit in the Capitol. It was around 7pm on Sunday when the first news arrived that Democrats and Republicans had reached a preliminary agreement in the Senate to reopen the flow of federal funding, which had been interrupted since October 1st.
After 14 rejected votes, a new proposal – presented hours earlier by Senate Republicans, led by John Thune – managed to convince eight Democratic senators, including negotiators Tim Kaine (Virginia), Angus King (Maine), Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan (New Hampshire). With their support, the conservative bloc (which holds 53 seats, plus one dissident, the veteran Rand Paul of Kentucky) reached the 60 votes needed to reach the qualified majority required by the Senate’s filibuster rules to approve important decisions, such as budget ones.
This agreement does not mark the final end of the lockdown, which this time has suspended the food stamp program for millions of needy people, pushed thousands of federal workers – deprived of pay – into food lines and caused chaos at airports across the country. It is quite the beginning of the end of the shutdown.
There were still three special votes in the Senate before the end of a day that would normally be a day of rest on Capitol Hill, but which made an exception Sunday due to the circumstances. The pact will subsequently go to the House of Representatives for ratification and then to US President Donald Trump for his signature. This process may take several days.
The deal, the details of which remain unclear, guarantees federal government funding until January 30. Then, if the disagreement between the two sides persists, the fight could return to square one and trigger a new lockdown.
The budget proposal includes a provision that Democrats had asked for: the reinstatement of federal employees fired during the shutdown, along with a guarantee that there will be no more mass layoffs until the end of January. It also eliminates Trump’s earlier threat that federal workers would not, as is customary, receive retroactive pay for lost wages during these 40 days. It also funds the food stamp program through the end of 2026.
However, the Democrats’ main objective remains out: to prevent the Affordable Care Act, the health subsidy program created during the pandemic as part of the law known as Obamacare, from expiring at the end of the year. Sunday’s agreement includes only a commitment from Republicans to hold a separate vote in Congress on that issue – a vote that, given the current balance of power, is highly unlikely to pass.
Trump against insurers
Trump’s stance on the ACA hasn’t helped. Over the weekend, the US president proposed on his social network, Truth Social, that the ideal solution would be to give Obamacare money directly to citizens, bypassing what he called “money-sucking insurance companies.” In recent days, Trump has also been particularly insistent that his allies in the Senate eliminate the filibuster. In the end it wasn’t necessary.
On Friday, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer unveiled his proposal to reopen the flow of government spending. His condition was a one-year extension of ACA subsidies so that, from then on, negotiations could proceed with reopening the government – something Thune had been calling for for weeks.
“We need Republicans to just say yes,” Schumer urged. But they immediately said no. In a speech to the Senate on Sunday, the Democratic leader announced that he would not support the latest Republican proposal because it does not do enough to address America’s health care crisis.” “Because of the Republicans, Americans will suffer immensely as this health crisis worsens,” he said.
“And make no mistake, the American people know who is inflicting this health trauma on them: Donald Trump and the Republicans,” Schumer added, predicting that Americans “will remember Republican intransigence every time they make a sky-high payment for health insurance.”
Five of the eight Democratic senators who ultimately decided to vote with the Republicans justified their decision in a joint press conference. “This bill is not perfect, but it takes important steps to reduce the harm caused by the shutdown,” Durbin said in a statement. Democrats also argued that ensuring a separate vote on the ACA would expose Republicans before voters.
The decision by these senators to break the unity their party had maintained for nearly 40 days has sparked yet another internal party crisis, coming just days after the brief joy of sweeping election victories in New York, New Jersey, Virginia and California last week. Those victories were an injection of confidence, coming exactly one year after Kamala Harris’ crushing defeat against Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
Everything suggests that the agreement was accelerated by the decision of the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), early Friday morning, to order the cancellation of hundreds of flights at the 40 main airports in the country to deal with the overload of air traffic caused by the absence or resignation of controllers, the federal employees affected by the government shutdown. On Sunday alone, more than 1,600 flights were canceled and delays continued to increase even on the third day of a measure with few precedents.
The freeze halted or severely reduced the activities of dozens of federal administrative agencies due to lack of funding. Nearly 13,000 air traffic controllers and thousands of airport security workers have not been paid since October 1. Many have decided to take leave to find other sources of income to cover household expenses.
Another consequence of the lockdown was the battle between the Trump administration and Democrats – with the intervention of a couple of federal judges and, ultimately, the Supreme Court – over the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), vital for 42 million Americans. The government has been fighting tooth and nail to avoid paying benefits since last week. This Sunday it emerged that he had even ordered states to recover money spent on food stamps during the judicial standoff.
There are 750,000 federal employees suspended without pay, who feared that the order could last until just before Thanksgiving (which this year falls on November 27). They followed Sunday’s news from the Capitol with understandable interest. Others, including air traffic controllers, are considered essential and are required to continue working, but without pay.
Dozens of museums, monuments and national parks have been forced to close their doors or operate without supervision or basic services such as waste collection. If Sunday’s tentative agreement holds, the government could reopen in the coming days once public funding lost in the feud between Democrats and Republicans is recovered.
Sign up to our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition
