The Price of Agreement - How Five Votes in the Senate Ended America’s Longest Shutdown

It was a late Sunday evening when the board in the Capitol lit up: 60 to 40 votes - the threshold had been crossed. After 41 days of paralyzing deadlock, the Senate had decided to reopen the government. Five Democrats had joined the Republicans, ending the longest shutdown in the history of the United States. No celebration, no pathos, only the exhausted rustle of papers as senators rose and left the chamber - knowing that the price of this vote had not yet been paid. The decision came after a small group of moderate Democrats had decided to give up the fight to extend health care subsidies. For weeks they had demanded that the tax credits for health insurance, which expire on January 1, be extended for another year. The Republicans refused, the country stood still, and patience ran out. Airports reported delays, food aid remained blocked, hundreds of thousands of federal employees worked without pay. Finally, five senators gave in - just enough to break the blockade.

Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Angus King of Maine, Tim Kaine of Virginia, and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada joined the Republicans. They were all part of a group of former governors who wanted to restart negotiations. Their compromise: three bipartisan spending bills should be passed immediately, while the rest of the government would be funded through the end of January. In return, the Republicans promised to hold a vote on health care subsidies by mid-December - a promise without obligation but with political symbolism.

Shaheen defended her decision on Monday as “the only option on the table.” The message about the importance of health care had been sent loudly enough, she said, and now the government had to be made functional again. In her own party, however, there was outrage. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader, declared after a two-hour crisis meeting that he could not “in good conscience” support the proposal. Bernie Sanders called the compromise a “horrific mistake.” Chris Murphy of Connecticut said that voters, who had clearly supported Democrats in the previous week’s elections, had instructed them to show “resolve, not concession.”

Despite the internal revolt, the Senate approved the bill. It provides that federal employees fired by Trump will be reinstated and protected from further layoffs until the end of January. Their salaries are to be paid retroactively. For more than 800,000 affected employees, it is a late but vital victory. In the House of Representatives, the decision will be taken up in the coming days. Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, called on his members to “return to Washington immediately.” He himself had kept the chamber in recess since mid-September - a political maneuver that deepened the paralysis. Now he speaks of urgency. “We have to do this as quickly as possible,” Johnson said, as if he had never been part of the problem.

President Trump, whose policies had triggered the shutdown, appeared demonstratively satisfied on Monday. “We’re going to be opening our country very soon,” he said on camera - one of those phrases that perfectly capture the contradiction between his self-image and reality. For weeks he had forced Congress to negotiate on his terms, while millions of citizens suffered the consequences. The Democrats had hoped to put him on the defensive by insisting on the health care subsidies that ease the burden on millions of families. But the front lines remained frozen until the moderate votes flipped. Dick Durbin of Illinois, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, and Jacky Rosen of Nevada eventually joined the compromise. All other Democrats, including Schumer and nearly the entire party leadership, voted against it. For many in the party, that Monday marked the moment when the moral point of their resistance began to erode. Greg Casar, chairman of the Progressive Caucus in the House, called it “a betrayal of millions of Americans.” A deal that does not reduce health care costs, he said, is “a slap in the face to all those who count on us.”

But there was also quiet approval. Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House, who had criticized Schumer earlier in the year, stood behind him this time. “The American people know that we are on the right side of this fight,” he said Monday evening. He tried to drown out the division that now runs deeper within his party than ever before. The conflict over health care subsidies is not resolved. On the contrary, it now lies at the center of the upcoming budget negotiations. Johnson said he saw no reason to bring the issue to a vote in the House at all. They wanted to “reform, not extend, the unaffordable care act,” as Trump calls it. Some Republicans said they were open to extending the tax credits introduced during the pandemic, but with new limits and conditions. Susan Collins, chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, proposed introducing income caps. “We have to act by the end of the year,” she said, “and that’s exactly what the majority leader has promised.”

What she did not say: that this promise is politically nonbinding. The Senate voted later that same Monday evening, 47 to 53, against a one-year extension of the subsidies - a symbolic vote, but a clear signal. The Republican majority does not want to preserve the existing program but to rewrite it. Thus, America’s longest government shutdown does not end with a victory of reason but with a tired compromise. The government will reopen, the paychecks will flow, the airports will operate, the food aid offices will open their doors. But the crack these weeks have left remains. It runs through the political heart of Washington - between responsibility and calculation, between conviction and exhaustion. Five votes were enough to set the country in motion again. But they also showed how deeply it is divided. The shutdown may end. The crisis that made it possible has only just begun.