Trump signs spending bill to end longest government shutdown

WASHINGTON — The longest partial government shutdown in history ended late Wednesday night when President Donald Trump signed into law a short-term spending patch that funds federal agencies through January.

Flanked by House GOP leaders around his desk in the Oval Office, Trump signed the bill as he repeated his call for abolishing the Senate filibuster to avoid the risk of another shutdown.

“This is no way to run a country,” Trump said in signing the bill ending a 43-day partial shutdown. “I hope we can all agree the government should never be shut down again.”

The House sent Trump the legislation just hours earlier, when it voted to clear the measure on a 222-209 vote that fell mostly along party lines.

Two Republicans opposed the measure: Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Greg Steube of Florida. Six Democrats joined Republicans to push the bill to passage: Henry Cuellar of Texas, Don Davis of North Carolina, Jared Golden of Maine, Adam Gray of California, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, and Tom Suozzi of New York.

The package would fund the government through Jan. 30 and provide full-year appropriations for the departments of Agriculture and Veterans Affairs, along with legislative operations. It would also reverse thousands of layoffs of federal employees that the White House sought to implement during the shutdown, while preventing future mass layoffs at least through the end of January.

It also means that full benefits can resume in coming days for nearly 42 million low-income people who rely on food stamps, after a series of court challenges allowed the Trump administration to block full payments for November temporarily. And airports across the country that have coped with thousands of flight delays and cancellations can begin getting operations back on track as more air traffic controllers resume their duties.

House Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain, R-Mich., said Democrats “inflicted needless pain on hardworking Americans” and “got nothing” in the end. “Millions of Americans whose lives were upended by the Democratic shutdown will remember this,” she said.

The package buys Congress 11 more weeks to ramp up funding negotiations to complete work on fiscal 2026 spending bills. Three of the dozen annual bills have now been passed as a result of the measure headed to Trump’s desk: Agriculture, Military Construction-Va and Legislative Branch.

Democrats overwhelmingly rejected the package, which notably does not include what has been their top priority: an extension of the Affordable Care Act enhanced health insurance subsidies set to expire at year’s end. And while Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., promised to hold a vote next month in his chamber on the health subsidies, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has made no such commitment.

“This bill fails to address the fundamental needs of families across our country,” said Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Health care premiums are skyrocketing because Republicans refused to extend the ACA tax credits, causing health care costs to go up for everyone.”

Eager to continue their fight, House Democrats announced plans on Wednesday to use a so-called discharge petition to force floor consideration of legislation that would extend the subsidies for three years. But that effort requires Democrats to muster 218 signatures in support of the measure, and Republicans are unlikely to back any plan to extend the subsidies without changes.

Last-minute snag

Republican support for the spending package threatened to unravel over the last few days after the discovery of a Senate provision that was slipped into the bill without the knowledge of House leaders.

The provision would allow senators to sue for at least $500,000 each when federal investigators search their phone records in a judicially sanctioned probe without notifying them.

It would also apply retroactively, meaning at least 10 senators whose records were searched by former special counsel John L. “Jack” Smith in his probe of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol would automatically be entitled to big payouts. The move outraged House Republicans, who expressed doubts about supporting a package that offered payouts to senators.

To ease that concern, Johnson announced on the social platform X that he would pursue legislation next week to repeal the Senate provision. Stripping the provision out of the current package would have meant sending the amended bill back to the Senate and prolonging the shutdown.

But the last-minute maneuver threatened to create a rift with Senate Republicans who would need to approve any stand-alone legislation that comes from the House. “I found out about it last night,” Johnson told reporters. “I was surprised. I was shocked by it and I was angry about it.”

Next steps on funding

The package marks the first time Congress has cleared individual full-year appropriations bills since early 2024 — and some appropriators are hopeful its passage is a sign of things to come.

Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., a key negotiator in funding talks in recent weeks, called the package’s passage in the Senate “a good exercise” that she hopes brings “back muscle memory” for Congress to move appropriations bills.

But completing the appropriations process will hardly come easy after a bitter shutdown fight that inflamed partisan tensions.

Leaders of both parties have yet to agree on topline discretionary spending limits for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, a critical step for passing most of the annual appropriations bills that remain. And Democrats say trust has eroded in spending talks due to efforts by the Trump administration to downsize parts of government and claw back funding without congressional buy-in.

The Senate, eager to build on the momentum of the recently passed fiscal 2026 three-bill package, is already setting sights on pushing through a second tranche of bills.

Once the Senate returns next week, GOP leadership plans to begin consideration on four bills reported out of committee earlier this year: the Defense, Labor-HHS-Education, Commerce-Justice-Science and Transportation-HUD bills.

The package, which calls for more than $1.2 trillion in discretionary spending for fiscal 2026, would account for the bulk of Congress’ funding work for the current fiscal year. But both chambers have landmines to navigate as they look to hash out their remaining funding bills by the new Jan. 30 deadline.

Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, voted against the package on Wednesday, partly because it would leave the Trump administration free to freeze funding it doesn’t like and pursue additional clawbacks of previously approved funds.

“So, why should we go down a road that is detrimental to ourselves,” she said, while warning that lawmakers will “probably be in the same place on Jan. 30.”

_____

(Aidan Quigley and Paul M. Krawzak contributed to this report.)