Updated November 11, 2025 at 9:51 AM AKST
On the 41st day of a record-long government shutdown, the U.S. Senate voted 60 to 40 to approve a continuing resolution to reopen the government. The measure would fund much of the government through Jan. 30 and provide funding for some agencies through the end of next September.
But the shutdown will not end right away. The U.S. House of Representatives must also pass the legislation, which is not guaranteed, before President Trump can sign it into law.
House leadership has told members to return to Washington for a vote as early as Wednesday afternoon.
Seven Democrats and one independent senator voted with nearly every Senate Republican to approve the stopgap funding bill after a more than monthlong impasse that resulted in missed paychecks for millions of federal workers, delayed food assistance benefits and air travel disruptions.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., was the sole GOP no vote.
The funding package includes language to reverse reductions in force of federal employees by the Trump administration during the shutdown, protections against further layoffs through the end of January, backpay for federal employees and a trio of appropriations bills, including one that will fully fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, through Sept. 30, 2026.
"This is a great victory for the American people, and it shows that the Senate can work," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Me.
A deal without Democrats' health care demands
But the deal does not include an extension of subsidies for Affordable Care Act health insurance premiums that are set to expire later this year. Most Democrats have refused to vote for a funding measure that did not include a concrete path to preserve the subsidies.
Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Sunday that he would hold a vote by mid-December on a bill of Democrats' choosing to extend the expiring subsidies. Thune has said throughout the shutdown that Republicans would only negotiate on the subsidies once the government was open.
"There was no guarantee that waiting would get us a better result, but there was a guarantee that waiting would impose suffering on more everyday people," Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., told NPR.
But the majority of Senate Democrats disagreed that this was the best deal they could get, doubting that Republicans would agree to extend the subsidies without the pressure of an ongoing shutdown. After Democratic victories on election night last week, some senators said it was a mistake to back down.
"A handshake deal with my Republican colleagues to reopen the government and no guarantee to actually lower costs is simply not good enough," Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc., said on the floor before the vote. "The people I work for need more than that. They need health care that they can afford, not a symbolic vote."
Over the weekend, a bipartisan group of senators reached an agreement to end the shutdown after holding a series of on-again, off-again talks over the last several weeks. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., who helped drive the bipartisan negotiations, told reporters Monday that more than eight members of the caucus had initially pledged to support the deal, but some backed out ahead of the vote.
On to the House
House leadership alerted members Monday morning that they would have 36 hours' notice to return to Capitol Hill for a vote. The House has not conducted official business since the chamber passed its version of a continuing resolution in mid-September. While Speaker Mike Johnson has held near-daily press conferences at the Capitol, many rank-and-file have not been in for weeks.
"At the very moment that they do that final vote, I will call all House members to return as quickly as possible," Johnson told reporters Monday and, noting the ongoing shutdown-related air travel delays, told members, "You need to begin right now returning to the Hill."
Moving the measure through the House could require some arm-twisting. Many Democrats have indicated they will not support the deal, and some hard-line Republicans may not be inclined to vote for it either.
But Johnson projected confidence Monday that the measure can pass and said Trump is ready to sign it.
Coming health care debate
Democrats now need to come up with health care legislation that can get the support of enough Republicans. Some Republicans in the House and Senate have expressed interest in preventing the Affordable Care Act premiums from skyrocketing, but many have also talked about the need for reforms like income caps and fraud prevention.
A few weeks is not much time for an overhaul, and people are deciding now whether to keep their insurance plans next year.
"If we want to get a bill that has bipartisan support, we've got to address some of those issues," Shaheen told reporters on Monday. "I think the White House is going to engage on this because the president has figured out, and his pollsters have been very clear, it's more of an issue for people in red states than it is in blue states. If he [doesn't], well, shame on him."
Speaker Johnson, though, told reporters on Monday that he would not guarantee an ACA vote in the House should a bill pass the Senate.
The government funding situation is not fully resolved for the year, either. The full-year funding measures passed by the Senate include money for agriculture, military construction and veterans affairs and the legislative branch. Congress still needs to pass nine other appropriations bills before the continuing resolution runs out again at the end of January.
NPR's Barbara Sprunt and Deirdre Walsh contributed reporting.
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