After months of rarely being in session, members of the House of Representatives will likely return to Washington this week and help end the longest federal government shutdown in American history.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., celebrated Republicans’ apparent victory. “At least some Democrats now finally appear ready to do what Republicans and President Trump and millions of hard working American people have been asking them to do for weeks,” Johnson told reporters on Monday. “As we said from the beginning, the people’s government cannot be held hostage to further anyone’s political agenda… Shutting down the government never produces anything.”
Johnson then urged House members to rush back to Washington in order to vote on the bill shortly after it passes in the Senate.
After flight delays, strains on entitlement programs, and federal workers missing paychecks, Democrats did not get much in exchange for their shutdown standoff. Eight Senate Democrats helped clear a procedural hurdle Sunday for a bill that will include three appropriations packages and fund the rest of the government through Jan. 31 in exchange for the promise of a future vote on extending COVID-era Affordable Care Act premium tax credits.
“Forty days of shutdown, and D.C. Democrats walked away with what was already on the table— proof shutdowns aren’t about policy, they’re about optics,” Rep. Nick LaLota, R-N.Y., told The Daily Signal in a statement. “This one was all about showing their base they’d ‘stand up to Trump,’ even if it meant freezing pay for Troops, federal workers, and cutting off [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] support.”
The last few months have been quiet on Johnson’s side of the Capitol complex, as the House has not voted since Sept. 19, which itself was shortly after they returned from a month-long August recess.
Now, House Republican leadership will have to rally its tight majority once again around a funding bill. Once Johnson swears in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, D-Ariz., he will only be able to afford two Republican defections on a party-line vote.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., is already rallying his members against the bill, saying Monday, “We’ll continue to wage this fight no matter what comes over to us from the United States Senate… We’re not going to support a partisan Republican spending bill.”
Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., a member of the Problem Solvers Caucus, is now urging his Democrat colleagues to help pass the funding extension or admit they are not true compromisers.
“Anyone in the Problem Solvers Caucus who supports a government shutdown can’t honestly claim to be about solving problems. The American people are tired of the games,” Lawler told The Daily Signal in a statement. “I’m encouraged by the news out of the Senate and hope they move quickly to finalize an agreement. Any members of the Problem Solvers Caucus who votes against the agreement coming out of senate should leave the caucus as they are the problem.”
Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, a member of the fiscally conservative House Freedom Caucus indicated to the Daily Signal that he expects Republicans will unite around it.
“We’re less than 24 hours into looking at the actual text. We’re still examining it. But right now, I can tell you it looks like—I expect the Republicans to vote for it.”
The House Freedom Caucus has endorsed passing a continuing resolution “as far into 2026 as possible” in order to keep spending flat, citing a low likelihood of fiscally conservative appropriations bills passing any time soon.
But Self says passing a package of three Senate appropriations bills does not necessarily conflict with his position and that of the House Freedom Caucus.
“We’ve been advocating for a yearlong CR, but the thing that this CR to the end of January does is it relieves us of the old, historic, traditional Christmas omnibus [bill] that everybody loads up with a wish list,” Self told The Daily Signal, referring to the congressional custom of hastily passing massive funding packages right before breaking for Christmas. “So this takes us past that, which is a very good deal.”
But temporary relief from the shutdown will not necessarily remove the sword hanging over Republicans’ heads.
Democrats will be hoping for an extension of COVID-era tax credits before their expiration, and it is unclear how Republican leadership will navigate contentious debates on the future of Obamacare.
In fact, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., has said voting against funding the government again is “definitely an option” if Republicans do not negotiate an extension, per a HuffPost reporter.
For now, Self says this debate can wait.
“As the Speaker has been saying for months now, that is a topic that we will take up once the shutdown is finished and ended, and then we’ll take up all of these controversial issues,” Self told The Daily Signal.
