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The shutdown stalemate that has dragged on in the Senate officially ended late Monday night, and it places Congress on a path to reopen the government later this week.
Senators advanced a bipartisan funding package to end the government shutdown after a group of Senate Democrats broke from their colleagues and joined Republicans in their bid to reopen the government.
Those same eight Senate Democratic caucus members stuck with Republicans and provided the crucial votes needed to send the package to the House.
MIKE JOHNSON EYES WEDNESDAY VOTE WITH END OF GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN IN SIGHT
The Senate smashed through procedural hurdles and advanced its package to reopen the government, with the onus of ending the shutdown now falling on the House. (Tom Brenner/Getty Images)
The votes went deep into Monday night on the shutdown’s 41st day and resulted in an updated continuing resolution (CR) being combined with a trio of spending bills in a minibus package that is now headed to the House.
Whether the Senate would get to this point was in the air for much of last week and even earlier in the day. On Monday, lawmakers were riding high after smashing through the package’s first procedural test, but concerns of objections and other procedural maneuvers threatened to derail the process.
“I think everybody’s pretty united [behind] this bill,” Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, said. “We want to reopen the government.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and his caucus demanded throughout the entirety of the shutdown that they would only vote to reopen the government if they received an ironclad deal on expiring Obamacare subsidies.
But that deal, or at least the one that Democrats wanted, never materialized. Instead, eight Senate Democrats took the offer that Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has made since the beginning: A guarantee to vote on legislation that would deal with the subsidies.
SENATE HOPES TO BLOW THROUGH…
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