Longest Government Shutdown in History Ends After 43 days

The House approved Senate-passed legislation this evening ending the 43-day government shutdown. The bill includes full-year funding for agencies covered by three of the 12 appropriations bills. Agencies in the other nine, including Defense, NASA, and NOAA, are funded through January 30, 2026. The goal is to pass those bills before then. The CR still needs to be signed into law by President Trump, but he is expected to do so imminently.

The House returned to work today for the first time since September 19 when it passed a Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep the government funded through November 21 because none of the appropriations bills would be enacted by October 1 when FY2026 began. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said consistently he would not bring the House back into session for legislative business until the Senate approved that CR. The House has been meeting only in pro forma sessions ever since.

Democrats insisted they would not agree to the CR, however, unless it included an extension of Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies that will expire on January 1. Without the subsidies, health costs for millions of Americans will grow dramatically or they will lose coverage entirely.

Republicans refused to include the extension. The CR passed the House with a simple majority, which is all that’s needed in that chamber. In the Senate, however, 60 votes are needed to pass legislation like this. The Senate has 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats, and two Independents who caucus with the Democrats. One Republican (Rand Paul of Kentucky) opposes CRs, so eight Democrats/Independents had to join the other 52 Republicans for the CR to pass.

That didn’t happen until Monday, after 41 days of the shutdown.

The Senate bill — the Continuing Appropriations, Agriculture, Legislative Branch, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Extensions Act, 2026 (H.R. 5371) — is different from what passed the House and therefore had to go back to the House for another vote. That’s what happened this evening. The vote in favor of the bill was 222-209 on a largely partisan basis, with six Democrats voting yes and two Republicans voting no.

 

The final step is for President Trump to sign it into law, which is expected later this evening. At that point the shutdown will end.

The new bill provides full-year funding through September 30, 2026 for agencies in the Military Construction-Veterans Affairs (MilCon-VA), Legislative Branch (Leg Branch), and Agriculture appropriations bills. Leg Branch funds Congress itself. Agriculture includes the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The Trump Administration’s refusal to pay SNAP benefits even though earlier legislation had provided an emergency fund for this type of situation became one of the flashpoints of the standoff. Another was Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy’s decision to reduce the number of airline flights across the country on the basis that air traffic controllers were calling in sick because they weren’t being paid and thus the National Air Space wasn’t safe.

Departments and agencies in the other nine bills are funded by a CR through January 30.

The bill does not include any extension of the ACA benefits sought by Democrats. Senate Democrats were only able to get a commitment from Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) to hold a vote on the ACA subsidies by the second week in December, but whatever the Senate does is not binding on the House.

The bill does guarantee back-pay to federal workers, prevents Reductions-in-Force (RIFs) through January 30, and reinstates those who were RIF’d since October 1.

Congress still has a lot of appropriations work ahead. The other nine bills face another cliff on January 30 if they are not enacted into law by then. They include Defense, Transportation-HUD (which funds the FAA and its Office of Commercial Space Transportation), and the Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) bill that funds NASA and NOAA.

The House Appropriations Commitee has cleared all 12 bills, but on a partisan basis with almost all Democrats voting against them. Only three passed the House, one of which is the MilCon-VA bill included in tonight’s package. The others are Defense and Energy-Water.

The Senate is taking a more bipartisan approach. Only the three included in the new CR had already passed the Senate, but five more have cleared the Senate Appropriations Committee including Defense, THUD and CJS, which could be taken up by the Senate at any time.

Until today, the longest shutdown was 35 days during Trump’s first term.