What’s in deal that could end government shutdown
Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) speaks at a press conference with other Senate Democrats who voted to restore government funding, in Washington, DC on November 9, 2025.
Nathan Posner | Anadolu | Getty Images
Senate Democrats are poised to help Republicans pass a bill that could lead to the end of the government shutdown. But the deal they’re agreeing to doesn’t directly address what was once Democrats’ key demand: an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies, which are due to expire by year’s end.
The Senate took a major step toward ending the shutdown on Sunday night, when eight Democrats in the narrowly divided chamber voted for a procedural motion that paves the way for approval of a negotiated funding bill.
Those eight Democrats, who broke with party leadership, were just enough for the measure to hit the 60-vote threshold required to overcome the filibuster. That rule has prevented Republicans, who hold a slim majority in the Senate, from reopening the government on their own.
The procedural vote’s passage broke a nearly six-week logjam in which most Senate Democrats repeatedly shot down a Republican-backed bill that would temporarily resume government funding at current levels.
What Democrats wanted
Democrats had demanded that any funding bill must include significant additional spending on health care protections and other key measures.
Most notably, they fought for a permanent extension of enhanced tax credits under the ACA, which were introduced during the Biden administration and are set to expire by year’s end. If those subsidies lapse, millions of Americans could either lose their health insurance or see their premiums rise significantly.
Democrats also sought to reverse some recent cuts to Medicaid and other health programs. And they aimed to address the Trump administration’s freezing of congressionally approved federal funds, which Democrats say is illegal.
What’s in the funding deal
The text of the funding deal that helped spur Sunday’s breakthrough leaves many of those priorities unaddressed. The 31-page bill makes no mention of the expiring Obamacare tax credits.
Instead, the agreement includes a guarantee from Republican leadership that the Senate will vote on a health care bill drafted by Democrats before the second week of December.
“That is a big step, because otherwise there’s no way for the minority to get a bill onto the floor of the U.S. Senate,” Sen. Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, said Sunday night after helping to broker the deal.
Even if a bill to extend the tax credits passes the Senate, it would have to be taken up and passed through the GOP-led House, and then signed by President Donald Trump. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has not promised to bring such a bill to a vote in his chamber.
The deal currently moving through the Senate also reportedly does not challenge Trump’s ability to make rescissions of congressionally appropriated funds.
But it does include a “minibus” that funds three of the 12 annual appropriations bills, and it would resume funding for the rest of the government through Jan. 30.
That full-year funding would cover the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP or food stamps, sources familiar with the deal told NBC News. The Trump administration has said that full SNAP benefits cannot be paid during the shutdown, prompting ongoing lawsuits from Democratic state leaders.
The deal would also reverse the Trump administration’s shutdown-related “reductions in force” or layoffs of federal workers, and ensure backpay for the paychecks they missed during the shutdown.
Deal divides Democrats
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., opposed the deal.
“This health care crisis is so severe, so urgent, so devastating for families back home, that I cannot in good faith support this [continuing resolution] that fails to address the health care crisis,” he said Sunday.
Distrustful Democrats had previously rejected Republicans’ insistence that any negotiations on the Obamacare subsidies could only come once the government was reopened.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., has also panned the Senate deal, and vowed to fight it if it comes to his chamber.
But King, who negotiated the Sunday compromise along with Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, maintained that it was futile to keep the painful shutdown going in hopes of getting Republicans to bend on health care.
“The question was, ‘Does the shutdown further the goal of achieving some needed support for the extension of the tax credits?’ Our judgment was that it will not produce that result. And the evidence for that is almost seven weeks of fruitless attempts to make that happen,” he told the press Sunday night.
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