After 40 days of a record federal shutdown, the Senate is now positioned to advance a funding package because a bloc of Democratic senators agreed to side with Republicans on the key procedural vote. Negotiators from both parties—most visibly Sens. Angus King(Ind-ME), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), and GOP appropriators—finished text on a continuing resolution that funds the government to Jan. 30 and welds it to three full-year spending bills for veterans, military construction, agriculture, and Congress. That combination gave Republicans something close to what they had been offering for weeks, but this time enough Democrats said they would no longer block it.

The immediate plan is to use the House-passed stopgap as the legislative vehicle, bring it up on the Senate floor, and amend it with the bipartisan package. Because several Democrats are now prepared to vote with Republicans, the 60-vote filibuster threshold that had kept the government closed can be cleared. That vote, expected the same night the deal was unveiled, is what allows leaders to say the government is “poised” to reopen, even though final passage and House action will still take a couple of days.

Why Democrats crossed over

The Democrats breaking ranks come largely from the moderate and pro-federal-workforce wing of the caucus. They represent states with large numbers of federal employees, or they were involved in the bipartisan talks that produced the new text. What moved them was a mix of shutdown fatigue, concrete wins inside the bill, and a written promise from Senate GOP leaders to hold a December vote on the expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies—Democrats’ central demand throughout the shutdown. Even though that promise is not the same as actually extending the subsidies, it was enough for them to say yes.

Two provisions in particular gave them cover. First, the package requires the administration to reverse the shutdown-related firings and to rehire furloughed federal workers with back pay. Second, it bars new reductions in force through Jan. 30. For senators like Tim Kaine of Virginia—who told colleagues he needed to “protect the federal workforce”—that was as important as the health-care fight. Once a few Democrats announced support, others followed so the vote would not look like it was carried by only a tiny minority of the caucus.

Progressives and party leaders, including Sen. Chuck Schumer and House leaders, still argued the deal gave up leverage too soon because it did not lock in the ACA subsidies. However, flight cancellations, SNAP disruptions, and the prospect of a second missed federal paycheck was considered the greater risk as opposed to waiting for a perfect health-care outcome by enough Senate Democrats. That calculation is what opened the door for Republicans.

What is in the funding plan

Substantively, the package does three things. It reopens the whole government on a temporary basis until Jan. 30, giving appropriators more time to write the remaining nine bills. It fully funds three bipartisan bills—VA/military construction, agriculture/FDA, and the legislative branch—for the rest of the fiscal year, so those areas no longer depend on short stopgaps. And it guarantees federal employees back pay and job restoration, undoing the shutdown layoffs. This is the structure described by Senate GOP leaders and confirmed by Democratic negotiators.

What is not in the bill is just as important: there is no actual extension of the ACA premium tax credits that expire at year’s end. Instead, Republicans reiterated the offer they have made for weeks—once the government is open, Democrats may bring up the ACA extension of their choice for a vote in December. There is no guarantee that such a bill will get 60 votes in the Senate or be taken up in the House, and several House Democrats immediately criticized the Senate plan for that reason. But the Senate Democrats who flipped accepted that sequence in order to end the shutdown.

This framework also contains the restoration of full SNAP funding through the agriculture bill, which has been a central public-facing consequence of the shutdown. With 42 million people affected, both parties had an incentive to move that piece quickly once a vehicle was available.

Republican strategy and next steps

For Senate Republicans, the breakthrough is that they achieved their long-stated procedural goal: reopen first, negotiate policy later. They did it not by changing their bill, which looks much like the offer Democrats had been blocking, but by attracting just enough Democratic votes to move it. Majority Leader John Thune had said publicly he would not put a bill on the floor without the votes, and Sunday’s whip count finally showed he had them. The message from GOP leaders is that Democrats had already voted 14 times to keep the government closed and that it was time to stop.

Once the Senate clears the bill, the House still has to act because the end date in the Senate’s continuing resolution—Jan. 30, 2026—is different from the date in the earlier House measure. Speaker Mike Johnson has not promised to schedule an ACA vote, but because the White House backs reopening on these terms, the political pressure on the House to follow suit will increase as soon as the Senate passes the package. Floor time, amendment fights, and individual senators like Rand Paul can still add days, but the main obstacle—the 60-vote wall in the Senate—is what this Democratic bloc just removed.

Why the government is now “poised” to reopen

The term “poised” is appropriate because all the essential ingredients are now in place: a bipartisan text, enough Democratic votes to overcome a filibuster, an administration ready to sign, and a House that has already passed a related stopgap. The remaining steps are timing and procedure. If senators who oppose parts of the deal insist on using the full debate time, reopening will slip a few days, but that is a logistical delay, not a political one. The political decision—Democrats joining Republicans to pass funding—has already been made.

Factually, then, the situation is this: a core group of Senate Democrats broke with their leadership and agreed to vote with Republicans; the bill they will support reopens the government through Jan. 30 and locks in three full-year spending bills; Republicans, in return, promised only a future vote on health-care subsidies; and once the Senate moves the package, the House will have a viable path to send it to President Trump, ending the longest shutdown in U.S. history.