The United States is moving closer to ending its record-breaking government shutdown after the Senate took a critical step towards ending its five-week impasse.

The upper chamber of Congress on Monday night approved a spending package by a vote of 60 to 40 to fund the US government through January 30 and reinstate pay for hundreds of thousands of federal workers.

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The spending bill next moves to the House of Representatives for approval and then on to President Donald Trump for his signature before the shutdown can finally end.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has said he would like to pass it as soon as Wednesday and called for legislators to immediately return to Washington, DC, to take part in the vote.

The vote in the Senate follows negotiations this weekend that saw seven Democrats and one independent agree to move the updated spending package to end the shutdown, which enters its 42nd day on Tuesday, to a debate and a vote.

Also included in the deal are three-year appropriations for the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration, military construction projects, veterans affairs and congressional operations.

The deal does not, however, resolve one of the most central issues of the shutdown – extending healthcare subsidies that benefit 24 million Americans under the Affordable Care Act.

Instead, the Senate Republicans only agreed to hold a vote on the issue by December.

Stopgap agreement

Analysts said this means there could be another shutdown in January.

“The deal that they’ve reached means most of the government will shut down again in January if they can’t come to another agreement, so this is just a stopgap arrangement,” said David Smith, an associate professor at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre.

“My guess will be if there hasn’t been a vote on Obamacare subsidies by the end of January or if the vote fails, then the shutdown will happen again,” he said, using a nickname for the Affordable Care Act.

The seven Democrats and one independent who voted with the Republicans are, clockwise from top left, Catherine Cortez Masto, Dick Durbin, John Fetterman, Maggie Hassan, Jeanne Shaheen, Jacky Rosen, Angus King and Tim Kaine [AP Photo]
The agreement has also provoked anger among the Democrats who preferred to keep holding out. They noted the vote came a week after Democrats won high-profile elections in New Jersey, Virginia and New York City and argued there is no guarantee that the Republican-controlled Senate or House would agree to extend the health insurance subsidies.

The group that supported the deal were Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin from Illinois, independent Angus King from Maine, John Fetterman from Pennsylvania, Catherine Cortez Masto and Jackie Rosen from Nevada, Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen from New Hampshire, and Tim Kaine from Virginia.

King, Cortez and Fetterman previously voted with Republicans to end the shutdown, citing its impact on Americans. Both Durbin and Shaheen are not seeking re-election in 2026 while Kaine’s state of Virginia is home to thousands of federal workers, according to the US news site Politico.

Fetterman told the NBC News programme Meet the Press that his breakaway group of senators wanted to “put the country before the party”.

“I think people realised this really needs to end, the mass chaos. How many people are going to play chicken for the food security of two million Americans? How much more unsafe are you going to make flying in our country?” he said on Tuesday.

The legislators had been under increasing pressure over lapses in funding to critical programmes like food assistance while hundreds of thousands of federal employees have been furloughed or required to work without pay since the shutdown began on October 1.

Trump has separately threatened to use the shutdown as a pretext to slash the federal workforce.

Voters have also felt the impact of the shutdown at airports across the US after the Federal Aviation Administration last week announced a 10 percent cut in air traffic due to absences by air traffic controllers, one of the groups working without pay.

‘Empty promise’

The move by Fetterman and others to cross the aisle was criticised by leading Democrats like Illinois Governor JB Pritzker – considered a Democratic contender for the 2028 presidential election – who called the deal an “empty promise”.

 

Without the subsidies, healthcare insurance premiums for more than 20 million Americans are due to double in 2026, according to estimates from the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. Another 15 million could lose health coverage and become uninsured by 2034 because of the changes, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Speaking on the Senate floor on Monday, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who votes with Democrats, blasted the raising of health insurance costs and putting millions of Americans at risk of losing healthcare coverage.

“Everybody in America knows our current healthcare system is broken. It is dysfunctional. It is cruel. It is by far the most expensive healthcare system in the world and the only healthcare system of any major country that does not guarantee healthcare to all people as a human right,” he said

“We are unique in that respect, and yet tonight, what this Senate is about to do is make a horrific situation even worse,” he added.