House Reconvenes After 53 Days to Vote on Ending Shutdown
The Senate passed the funding package on Monday night with eight Democrats joining Republicans. The House, which last voted on September 19, takes it up on day 42 of the longest shutdown in U.S. history.
One chamber already moved. The other one just has to show up.
The House votes tonight on the Senate's funding package, reconvening Wednesday, November 11, for its first votes since September 19, 53 days ago. [Shutdown timeline, November 11 (Duke Government Relations)]
The Senate passed the package on Monday night, with eight Democrats — Shaheen, Hassan, Durbin, Kaine, Cortez Masto, Rosen, Fetterman and King — joining Republicans, and Rand Paul the lone Republican against. It funds most agencies through January 31. [Shutdown timeline, November 11 (Duke Government Relations)]
The package pays furloughed federal workers for the weeks they were sent home, reverses the reductions in force carried out since October 1, and bars new ones through January. Three bills ride along at full-year funding: Agriculture and the FDA, military construction and veterans' affairs, and the legislative branch itself. Everything else runs on the stopgap to January 31. [Shutdown timeline, November 11 (Duke Government Relations)]
What the deal doesn't settle is health care. Senate Majority Leader John Thune pledged a Senate vote by mid-December on extending the Affordable Care Act's premium tax credits. Speaker Mike Johnson has made no matching commitment in the House, where Democratic leaders say they will file a discharge petition to force a vote on a three-year extension, and Rosa DeLauro, the Appropriations Committee's ranking Democrat, never signed off on the package. [Shutdown timeline, November 11 (Duke Government Relations)]
Getting the members into the room is its own problem. Johnson told House members to return to Washington early to beat the flight delays the shutdown itself is causing, as airport staffing shortages cancel and delay flights nationwide. The chamber last voted on September 19, when it passed a stopgap the Senate then rejected again and again while the shutdown set its record. [Shutdown timeline, November 11 (Duke Government Relations)]
Tonight's mechanics are short. The House takes up the Senate's amended bill as it arrived; a majority sends it to the President's desk, and one signature ends the shutdown. [TML: House Votes Tonight on Bill Ending Record Shutdown]
The shutdown is on its 42nd day. The record it broke, set in 2018 and 2019, was 35. [TML: House Votes Tonight on Bill Ending Record Shutdown]
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A little more perspective.
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