The Senate on Monday night passed a bill to fund the federal government through January and end the longest shutdown in U.S. history.
The bill, which passed 60-40 with support from a handful of Democratic senators and nearly all Republicans, will be sent to the House of Representatives.
If it passes the House, the legislation will head to President Donald Trump to be signed into law.
Trump earlier Monday said he supports the funding deal, which was negotiated between Republicans and a gang of moderate Senate Democrats nearly six weeks after the shutdown began on Oct. 1.
House Speaker Mike Johnson told his Republican conference earlier Monday that he wanted GOP House members to begin traveling to Washington, D.C., for a vote on the bill.
House members were told that votes on the deal could begin by 4 p.m. ET on Wednesday.
Before the Senate vote, Johnson refused to commit to the deal’s key guarantee to Democrats: that Congress will hold a separate vote in December on potentially extending enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies. That vote would be on a bill of the Democrats’ choosing, according to the Senate agreement.
“I’m not committing to it or not committing to it,” Johnson, R-La., said Monday on CNN.
Those subsidies, which are due to expire at the end of December, help reduce the cost of individual health insurance plans for more than 20 million Americans.
Until Sunday night, when the Senate passed the first stage of the newly negotiated deal, Democratic senators almost without exception refused to vote to reopen the government because the original House Republican bill did not extend the ACA tax credits.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., angrily condemned the deal on Sunday night for not ensuring that the subsidies will survive into 2026, as many Americans will face much higher insurance prices without them.
The Senate deal would fund the government through the end of January; reverse all shutdown-related layoffs of federal employees; and guarantee that all federal workers will be paid their normal salaries during the shutdown.
The deal also includes provisions for a bipartisan budget process and prevents the White House from using continuing resolutions to fund the government.
CRs have been repeatedly used to avoid government shutdowns, but are controversial because they frequently avoid lawmakers having to make decisions about long-term funding of the government that a normal budget would resolve.
The deal would also fund, through September, the SNAP program, which helps feed 42 million Americans through food stamps.
Under a federal law passed in 2019, government employees who are furloughed during a shutdown must be paid for the time they were out of work at their standard rate of pay “at the earliest date possible, regardless of scheduled pay dates.”
— CNBC’s Emily Wilkins contributed to this story.
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