The government shutdown is not over yet. But it’s getting closer to the end after the Senate has finally gained 60 votes for cloture.

The Republicans kept the Senate open over the weekend, hammering out details of three “minibus” bills that would be added on to the “clean” continuing resolution vote. The additional bills dealt directly with funding.

(Senator Jeanne) Shaheen, a member of the Appropriations committee, worked with Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine), on the funding bills included in the package.

That proposal would fund military construction, veterans’ affairs, the Department of Agriculture and the legislative branch though Sept. 30 of 2026.

It includes a stopgap measure to fund the rest of government through Jan. 30.

The compromise proposal includes language to retain more than 4,000 federal workers targeted for layoffs during the shutdown as well as language to prevent the Trump administration from firing additional federal workers through reductions in force (RIFs) for the length of the newly drafted continuing resolution — until Jan. 30.

Now, while this looks like “a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down” for Senate Democrats, it actually is some clever strategy by Senate Republicans. Notice the dates on the funding bills, and then notice the expiration date for the continuing resolution. These “minibus” bills would keep these targeted departments funded even if the government shuts down again. In other words, that “leverage” that Democrats were counting on – people demanding their SNAP benefits lest they starve? Gone. And what do the Democrats get in return?

(Senate Majority Leader John) Thune agreed as part of the broader deal to schedule a vote later this year on legislation to extend the enhanced health insurance premium subsidies under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that are due to expire in January.

The Senate GOP leader, however, did not guarantee that any bill to extend the subsidies will pass the Senate or — if it passes the upper chamber — get a vote in the House.

(Senator Maggie) Hassan and (Senator Angus) King focused on getting Thune to agree to a vote in December on extending enhanced health insurance subsidies.

Despite the bipartisan negotiations, both Chuck Schumer and Bernie Sanders were refusing to vote for the funding bills, because they weren’t going to get any guarantees on the Obamacare subsidy renewals. And they were very upset that the votes for cloture had been achieved.

America is in the midst of a Republican-made health care crisis—a crisis so severe, so urgent, and so devastating for American families that I cannot support a continuing resolution that fails to address it.

I am voting NO. pic.twitter.com/qfiMma6y5D

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) November 10, 2025

Tonight was a very bad night. pic.twitter.com/t2rM48XEyV

— Sen. Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) November 10, 2025

The reality is, of course, that Democrats used the shutdown to drive up turnout for Election Day, and once they won, some of them were willing to move forward to open the government. Others, like Schumer and Sanders, thought that they would be able to keep stretching this out in order to extort concessions from John Thune. And now they will get nothing – and other Democrats are wondering what the point was.

It’s almost like they did it to help them win some elections last week and not for any greater purpose https://t.co/NQePJxCzPL

— Sunny (@sunnyright) November 10, 2025

Bluesky was melting down and blaming Schumer. MSNBC couldn’t tell which end was up.

Scraping together the votes was no joke, as Senator John Cornyn of Texas was in the process of flying back to Washington DC and the vote was held open for him. In the end, eight Senate Democrats joined 52 Republicans (Senator Rand Paul was his consistent contrarian self, as per his usual arrangement) to hit the 60 vote cloture threshold.

In a 60-40 vote — with eight Democratic-leaning senators joining Republicans — the Senate invoked cloture to break the filibuster and move forward with a bipartisan spending patch to fund the government through Jan. 30, 2026, as well as a “minibus” package that will fully restore food stamp benefits.

Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Jacky Rosen of Nevada, and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania all broke with their party and voted in favor of the package. Angus King of Maine, an Independent who caucuses with Dems, also voted yes.

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky was the only Republican to vote no.

Interestingly, senators who HAD voted for previous funding bills – namely, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock of Georgia – did not vote for this one. That could make things interesting for Ossoff, who is widely acknowledged to be in a toss-up seat going in to the 2026 election. Of the eight who voted for cloture, several had a hand in crafting the funding bills, Durbin is retiring and doesn’t have to listen to Schumer if he doesn’t want to, and Fetterman has consistently voted to open the government back up. He issued this apology to voters last night.

After 40 days as a consistent voice against shutting our government down, I voted YES for the 15th time to REOPEN.

I’m sorry to our military, SNAP recipients, gov workers, and Capitol Police who haven’t been paid in weeks.

It should’ve never come to this.

This was a failure.

— U.S. Senator John Fetterman (@SenFettermanPA) November 10, 2025

Senator Angus King was shockingly pragmatic about his vote.

“The question was, does the shutdown further the goal of achieving some needed support for the extension of the tax credits? Our judgment was that it will not,” King said. “It would not produce that result. And the evidence for that is almost seven weeks of fruitless attempts to make that happen.”

Now, just because cloture has happened doesn’t mean the government is back open. With the filibuster officially ended, the Senate will now vote on these bills to pass them – which only needs a simple majority and can be done on party lines. Some Democrats may choose to vote for them, especially those who helped write the funding bills, but with cloture achieved, the bills and the continuing resolution can now pass.

However, because this wasn’t just the “clean” CR that the House of Representatives passed already, the “minibus” bills and the CR now have to go back to the House to be passed again. And House Democrats are planning to make a huge stink.

Democrats from nearly all corners of the party railed against the deal to end the government shutdown.

“It now appears that Senate Republicans will send the House of Representatives a spending bill that fails to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) fumed, declining to call out the Senate Dems who caved.

“We will fight the GOP bill in the House of Representatives, where Mike Johnson will be compelled to end the seven-week Republican taxpayer-funded vacation.”

“If this is the so-called ‘deal,’ then I will be a no,” Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) declared Sunday in response to rumors of the deal. “That’s not a deal. It’s an unconditional surrender that abandons the 24 million Americans whose health care premiums are about to double.”

Democratic National Committee Vice Chair Malcolm Kenyatta similarly lamented that, “Any ‘deal’ that ends with Dems just getting a pinky promise in return is a mistake.”

Well, that’s all the Democrats are going to get, it seems. And yes, Speaker Johnson will be calling everyone back in (remember, the House had nothing to vote on and nothing to do until the Senate got done with the CR – that’s how the legislative branch works) in order to vote on the revised CR and the add-on funding bills. Can House Democrats raise hell and make passing everything difficult? Yes, but there is no filibuster rule in the House, so a simple majority vote – which the Republicans do currently have in the narrowest of margins, so long as there are no or few defections – will get the job done. President Trump has been vocal about wanting the shutdown to end (and he was willing to blow up the filibuster in the Senate to make that happen), so he will probably sign these bills with a flourish to get the government opened back up.

While this isn’t a done deal to open the government up yet, we’re getting closer. I expect that even more Democrats will be howling, spitting, and swearing about how they got next to nothing for the shutdown. So much for “leverage.”

Featured image via Proulain on Pixabay, cropped, Pixabay license