By Katy Stech Ferek, Olivia Beavers and Richard Rubin
WASHINGTON -- The Republican-led House approved a spending package to reopen the government late Wednesday, sending the measure ending the record-long 43-day shutdown to President Trump's desk for his signature.
The legislation passed the House on a 222 to 209 vote, largely along party lines.
The package passed Wednesday extends funding for the federal government through Jan. 30 and includes full-year funding for the Agriculture Department, military construction and the legislative branch. The bill also includes language guaranteeing the reversal of federal layoffs initiated by the Trump administration during the shutdown in a move to pressure Democrats, as well as a moratorium on future cuts.
The resolution of the standoff ensures paychecks for federal employees, including air-traffic controllers, and sends hundreds of thousands of furloughed government workers back to the job. But it postponed until later this year the central political fight: How to address the expiration of hefty healthcare subsidies that are set to be cut off for millions of households.
In Wednesday's vote, several more Democrats voted with Republicans to fund the government than in the last vote nearly two months ago, when Rep. Jared Golden of Maine was the only supporter. This time, six Democrats backed the bill, including Golden as well as Henry Cuellar of Texas, Adam Gray of California, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, Tom Suozzi of New York and Don Davis of North Carolina.
On the GOP side, Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Greg Steube of Florida bucked their party and voted no.
Trump was expected to sign the legislation later Wednesday evening.
House passage after Senate drama
House passage came two days after the Senate approved the measure. A band of senators who caucus with the Democrats broke with the party to advance the package Sunday night, amid deepening worries about the impact of the shutdown on low-income Americans and air travel and little evidence that Trump or Senate Republicans would blink first.
Final Senate passage came on a 60-40 vote Monday night. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.), who had kept the House out since mid-September to keep up pressure on Democrats, then ordered House lawmakers back to Washington.
In comments after the vote, Johnson called the shutdown "utterly pointless and foolish" and blamed Democrats for the hardship it caused. "Voters are going to remember which political party played games with their lives," he said.
Democrats had insisted for more than a month that any deal to reopen the government include an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies, saying the GOP was making healthcare unaffordable.
Some Republicans were sympathetic to the demands because more than 20 million Americans get the tax credits to lower the cost of their health plans and are set to see their premiums rise sharply next year. But Trump and GOP leaders said that they would only negotiate after the government was reopened. Senate Republican leaders ultimately promised to hold a vote on ACA subsidies by mid-December.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) said Democrats would continue to push for legislation to extend the enhanced ACA subsidies, which Democrats first passed in 2021 as a Covid-related measure, including with a new bill that would extend them for three more years. At a press conference Wednesday, Jeffries said that Democrats would pressure Republicans to join in supporting that proposal and cast them as controlled by the president.
"Republicans in the House have continued to act like a wholly owned subsidiary of the corrupt Trump cartel," he said. On healthcare, he said, "this fight is not over."
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the White House was looking forward to reopening the government and the "damage caused by the Democrats with this reckless government shutdown cannot be forgotten."
She said Republicans were willing to talk about healthcare and that Trump would put forward his own proposals. During the shutdown fight, Trump backed the notion of households getting federally funded health accounts, an idea floated by some GOP senators, but didn't offer specifics.
Democrats' failure to extract concessions in the shutdown mirrored past standoffs, when the party that initiates the standoff seldom gets major political wins. But the decision by some caucus members to throw in the towel -- less than week after convincing election wins in Virginia, New Jersey and New York City -- reopened intraparty feuding over how best Democrats should respond to Trump. The split also fueled criticism of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) from progressive activists for failing to keep his troops in line.
A largely united GOP on vote
The GOP remained largely united during the fight. The House Freedom Caucus backed the bill, praising the funding patch in a memo as a "total win for HFC, conservative leadership, and messaging." Rep. Victoria Spartz (R., Ind.), who was one of two GOP lawmakers to vote against the House stopgap bill in September, made clear she would vote in favor of this one.
The measure overcame last-minute bipartisan complaints about a provision offering potentially lucrative payouts to some Republican senators.
In a late wrinkle, House lawmakers took issue with a provision that allows senators to seek damages of $500,000 if federal investigators collect their phone records without their knowledge as part of an investigation. The provision is seen as designed to help eight senators whose records were obtained as part of former special counsel Jack Smith's probe into Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Democrats and Republicans alike attacked it. But GOP critics indicated they didn't want their objections to derail reopening the government and instead would try to kill the provision with separate legislation afterward. Johnson said Wednesday that Republicans would introduce stand-alone legislation next week to try to repeal the provision.
The shutdown, which began Oct. 1, furloughed some federal workers and required others to work without immediate paychecks. The lapse in funding led to delayed flights and prevented the release of important economic data. It also threatened food benefits for millions of households, closed museums, limited national park access and prevented people from resolving tax questions with the Internal Revenue Service.
Pausing government spending doesn't end up saving money for the government. A bipartisan 2019 Senate report found that shutdowns caused the U.S. to spend more than $300 million on extra administrative work, lost revenue and late fees. Also, while the White House fired thousands of workers during the shutdown, the legislation funding the government requires that they be rehired. Federal workers, whether they were on the job or not, will get back pay.
The end of the federal government shutdown will leave behind a modest but real scar on the U.S. economy and see taxpayers compensating furloughed employees who stayed home and didn't work during the funding lapse.
"It was an irritant more than a shock to the economy, but that irritant was becoming greater and greater," said Gregory Daco, chief economist at the accounting firm EY.
Write to Katy Stech Ferek at katy.stech@wsj.com, Olivia Beavers at Olivia.Beavers@wsj.com and Richard Rubin at richard.rubin@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 12, 2025 21:10 ET (02:10 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
