The U.S. Senate is on the verge of overcoming a key procedural hurdle on a bill to end the government shutdown as the funding impasse nears its 41st day.
On Sunday evening, following an unusually busy weekend at the Capitol that saw bipartisan negotiations and all-nighters by legislative staff, at least 60 senators agreed to invoke cloture on the funding bill.
Though voting is ongoing, winning the support of 60 senators clears the way for final passage by a simple majority, and all but guarantees an end to the longest shutdown in U.S. history.
The bill was already passed by the House, and will likely be signed quickly by President Donald Trump if it wins final passage in the Senate.
“After 40 long days, I’m hopeful that we can finally bring the shutdown to an end,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said on the Senate floor ahead of the vote.
The proposed stopgap funding agreement, led on the GOP side by Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins (R-Maine), resulted from days of backroom negotiations.
Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), and Angus King (I-Maine), who caucus with Democrats, led the Democratic side of the negotiations.
The multi-part deal includes the House-passed “clean” funding bill to punt government funding into January, a vote on a three-part appropriations package dubbed a “minibus,” and a promise from Thune that the Senate will take up a vote on extending Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies later this year.
The minibus funding bill under consideration would greenlight full-year funding for three sectors of the government, ensuring that these sectors will maintain funding even if there’s another shutdown in 2026.
Speaking about the minibus on the Senate floor ahead of the vote, Collins encouraged passage of the agreement, noting that it came about in part because her staff “missed an entire night’s sleep to get this package together.”
The deal will put an end to the longest government shutdown in history, as disruptions to air traffic, social program payouts, and other government services increased pressure on both sides to find a way forward.
Previous attempts by Senate Republicans to reopen the government, tallying 14, had failed as Democrats continued to withhold their support for a measure to end the shutdown.
Medicaid and ACA Subsidies
The central issue of the shutdown went back to the health care provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Trump’s signature tax and spending bill.
Included in that bill are roughly $930 billion in cuts to Medicaid that helped to finance a provision that made permanent tax cuts that were originally enacted in 2017.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act also does not extend tax subsidies for Affordable Care Act (ACA) policies, which are due to expire at the end of 2025. These subsidies reduce the cost of ACA health insurance policies for buyers.
Democrats originally pushed for a reversal to the Medicaid cuts included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, citing Congressional Budget Office and other estimates that the cuts could result in more than 10 million Americans losing health coverage, higher health insurance premiums, and hospital closures.
Democrats had also demanded a one-year extension of ACA subsidies as a minimum requirement for their support to end the shutdown, referencing analyses that suggest ACA premiums could more than double next year if the subsidies aren’t extended.
Recently, Democrats focused more on the latter demand, seeking a one-year extension to the subsidies.
Republicans have said that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s cuts to Medicaid were entirely centered around waste, fraud, and abuse, and have characterized the Democrats’ demands to reverse these cuts as excessive.
Though the GOP has been more open to an extension of ACA subsidies, Republican leaders had rejected taking up the issue until the government was reopened.
As part of Sunday’s funding agreement, Thune told Democrats that a standalone vote on ACA subsidies would be held in December.
An extension of these subsidies could win enough GOP support in the upper chamber to pass, as purple seat Republicans in both chambers whose constituents rely on the funding have expressed openness to considering the idea.
It’s unclear whether House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) would bring the bill for a vote in the lower chamber.
Speaking on the Senate floor ahead of the vote, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) spoke in opposition to the deal, expressing skepticism that a bill providing for ACA subsidy extensions would either be taken up in the House or signed by Trump.
“If this vote succeeds, over 20 million Americans are going to see at least a doubling in their premiums,” Sanders said. “For certain groups of people, it will be a tripling and a quadrupling of their premiums.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) also announced that he would be opposing the stopgap, citing healthcare policy concerns.
Minibus
Also announced as part of the deal, the Senate will vote on a so-called “minibus” appropriations package to fund several sectors of the government for a full year.
This minibus package would include three of the 12 government appropriations bills that need to be passed annually. Failure to pass one or all of these bills before the funding deadline results in a partial or complete government shutdown.
Details of the minibus were released by the Senate Appropriations Committee on Sunday ahead of the deal being announced. The package would fund legislative branch operations, military construction and the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and its operations.
USDA oversees nutrition assistance programs such as the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps, and its subsidiary Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program. Funding the agency for a full year would prevent SNAP funding lapses at least through late 2026.
Currently, Congress has not finalized passage of any of the 12 spending bills.
The Associated Press and Jacob Burg contributed to this report.
