WASHINGTON — The House is scheduled to be back in session Wednesday with a vote expected in the evening on a spending package that, if approved and signed by President Trump, will end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.
The legislation, which the Senate passed Monday night, is expected to narrowly pass the House, where Republicans hold a slim majority. House Democrats are largely anticipated to oppose the deal, which does not include a core demand: an extension to Affordable Care Act healthcare tax credits that are set to expire at the end of the year.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said he believes the deal is poised to pass by the end of the day.
“We believe the long national nightmare will be over tonight,” Johnson told reporters in Washington. “It was completely and utterly foolish and pointless.”
Trump has indicated he will sign the bill into law as soon as it reaches his desk — a commitment the White House reiterated on Wednesday ahead of the floor vote.
“President Trump looks forward to finally ending this devastating Democrat shutdown with his signature and we hope that signing will take place later tonight,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a news briefing.
House Democrats met ahead of the floor vote, and discussed plans to force a vote on extending the expiring healthcare tax credits for three years.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters Wednesday that he would push for a petition that would force the floor vote, though it is unclear whether it would have enough support from Republicans. To force a floor vote, the petition needs 218 signatures.
If the tax credits expire, premiums will more than double on average for more than 20 million Americans who use the healthcare marketplace, according to independent analysts at the research firm KFF.
The spending bill, if approved, will fund the government through Jan. 30 and reinstate federal workers who were laid off during the shutdown. It will also guarantee back pay for federal employees who were furloughed or who were working without pay during the budget impasse.
Passage of the bill would mark a crucial moment on the 43rd day of the shutdown, which left thousands of federal workers without pay, millions of Americans uncertain on whether they would receive food assistance and travelers facing delays at airports across the country.
Ahead of the floor vote, House Democrats were still trying to find ways to consider a vote to extend the expiring healthcare subsidies.
House Democrats have also criticized a provision in the funding bill that would allow senators to sue the federal government if their phone records are obtained without them being notified.
The provision, which is retroactive to 2022, appears to be tailored for eight Republican senators who last month found their phone records have been accessed as part of a Biden-era investigation into the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Some House Republicans were caught off guard by the provision.
House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said at a committee hearing on Tuesday night that he was “surprised” to see the language tucked in the bill, but said he still supported a bill to end the shutdown.
“Do I think it needs to be in the funding bill? Not particularly,” Cole said. “But do I think getting the government open is important? Yes I do.”
A final vote is expected to begin after 4 p.m. EST — after Johnson swears in Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who was elected seven weeks ago. Once sworn in, Grijalva is set to become the final vote needed to force a floor vote on a petition demanding the Trump administration release files connected to Jeffrey Epstein.
The swearing-in ceremony will soon lay the groundwork for a House vote that Trump has long tried to avoid. It would come as the Epstein saga was reignited on Wednesday morning when Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released new emails in which the late sex trafficker said Trump “spent hours” with a victim at his house and Trump “knew about the girls.”
The emails were part of a trove of 23,000 documents from Epstein’s estate released to the committee. House Republicans publicly released all the records shortly after Democrats released some of the emails.
Trump addressed the emails directly in a social media post in which he accused Democrats of “trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because of how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown.”
“There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else, and any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening our Country, and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats!” Trump wrote.
