House Votes To End Shutdown: See How MN Delegation Voted

Returning to Washington on Wednesday after nearly eight weeks away, Minnesota’s congressional delegation split squarely along party lines on a stopgap funding bill to reopen the federal government after the longest shutdown in U.S. history.

All four Republican House members — Tom Emmer, Brad Finstad, Michelle Fischbach, and Pete Stauber — voted "Yea," while Democrats Angie Craig, Betty McCollum, Kelly Morrison, and Ilhan Omar all voted "Nay."

Minnesota’s senators, Democrats Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, also opposed the measure when it passed the Senate earlier in the week.

The House narrowly passed the spending package to reopen the government in a 222-209 vote. President Donald Trump signed the bill Wednesday night, ending the 43-day impasse, the longest shutdown in U.S. history, that left millions of federal workers without paychecks, delayed food assistance, and caused massive air travel disruptions.

The measure, H.R. 5371, funds much of the government through Jan. 30 and provides funding for some agencies through the end of next September.

It doesn’t include the key demand of Democrats, an extension of subsidies for Affordable Care Act Health Act premiums that will expire later this year. Republicans said that was a separate policy fight to be held another time.

“We told you 43 days ago from bitter experience that government shutdowns don’t work,” said Rep. Tom Cole, the Republican chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. “They never achieve the objective that you announce. And guess what? You haven’t achieved that objective yet, and you’re not going to.”
Six House Democrats joined Republicans in voting to support it, and two Republicans voted against it. Earlier this week in the Senate, seven Democrats and one independent joined nearly all Republicans in voting for the stopgap funding bill.

Federal workers are expected to return to work beginning Thursday. At least two agencies — the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of the Interior — offered guidance to employees on returning to their jobs, The New York Times reported.

The appropriations bills within the funding package include one that will fully fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, military construction and veterans affairs through September. Additionally, the legislation reverses federal employee layoffs, provides back pay for those employees, and includes protections against further federal layoffs through the end of January.

“This is a great victory for the American people, and it shows that the Senate can work,” Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said after the stopgap measure cleared the final hurdle in the Senate on a 60-40 vote.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota said on Sunday that he would allow a vote by mid-December on a Democratic-backed bill to extend the expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies. Thune has consistently maintained that Republicans would only negotiate on the subsidies after the government shutdown ended.

Without the enhanced tax credit, premiums on average will more than double for millions of Americans. More than 2 million people would lose health insurance coverage altogether next year, the Congressional Budget Office projected.

It’s unclear whether the parties will find any common ground on health care before the December vote in the Senate. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana has said he will not commit to bringing it up in his chamber.

Some Republicans have said they are open to extending the COVID-19 pandemic-era tax credits as premiums will soar for millions of people, but they also want new limits on who can receive the subsidies. Some argue that the tax dollars for the plans should be routed through individuals rather than go directly to insurance companies.

Collins, the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Monday that she supports extending the tax credits with changes, such as new income caps. Some Democrats have signaled they could be open to that idea.

House Democrats expressed great skepticism that the Senate effort would lead to a breakthrough.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said Republicans have wanted to repeal former President Barack Obama’s signature health care program for the past 15 years.

“That’s where they’re trying to go,” she said.

After refusing to convene the U.S. House during the government shutdown, Johnson faces an avalanche of pent-up legislative demands from lawmakers who have largely been sidelined from governing since the speaker took the unusual step of shuttering the House on Sept. 19 ahead of the Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government.

The speaker has defended his decision to shutter the House, arguing that the chamber, under the GOP majority, had already done its job passing a stopgap funding bill in September. It would be up to the Senate to act, he said.

As the House returned to work Wednesday, Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva was finally sworn into office on the House floor, taking the oath more than seven weeks after her special election victory.

The swearing-in marked the conclusion of a contentious stalemate with GOP Speaker Mike Johnson, who had previously prevented her from being seated during the record government shutdown.

With Grijalva seated, the GOP majority in the House shrinks to 219-214.

Grijalva’s first act as a congresswoman was to provide the required 218th signature on a bipartisan discharge petition that allows rank-and-file lawmakers to bypass Johnson and the House leadership team and force a vote on the release of the Justice Department files related to the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Johnson said Wednesday that he plans to hold a vote next week on the measure that would mandate full disclosure of the files.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.