The disastrous shutdown for Democrats deepened Sunday when Senate Democrats rejected government funding without receiving anything significant in return.
Eight Senate Democrats, along with 42 Republicans, voted Sunday night in a procedural vote to pass a continuing resolution (CR) funding the government's progress.
The proposal passed 60 to 40, with no remaining votes, and would allow future votes on a clean continuing resolution through Jan. 30, 2026, including three relatively uncontroversial appropriations bills covering the entire fiscal year: Agriculture, Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and the Legislature.
The agreement includes back pay for federal workers and guarantees that more than 4,000 federal employees laid off during the shutdown will be rehired, as well as a complete ban on future layoffs until Jan. 30. Those jobs are a drop in the bucket compared to the roughly 250,000 the Trump administration eliminated before the shutdown.
Most importantly, the agreement does not guarantee an extension of Obamacare's expanded premium subsidies in the Covid era, as Democrats only get guarantees of voting on the bill of their choice.
“As I have been telling my Democratic friends for weeks, I will schedule a vote on their proposal, and I am committed to holding that vote no later than the second week of December,” Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.C.) said on the Senate floor before the vote.
Even if such a bill passes the Senate, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Los Angeles) has not committed to bringing it to the House floor.
As a result, Democrats once again promised too many results to their voters, only to come up empty-handed after inflicting forty days of pain over no issue.
Democratic Senators Maggie Hassan (NH), Jeanne Shaheen (NH), Dick Durbin (IL), Jacky Rosen (NV) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) supported the procedural vote. They joined Senators Catherine Cortez-Masto (D-NM), Angus King (I-ME) and John Fetterman (D-PA), who previously voted to allow the House-passed CR to move forward.
Republican Senator Rand Paul (Ky.) voted against it, as he had done in all previous rounds of voting.
The result was another victory for Thune, who sat in the Senate over the weekend to seek an agreement. promising for senators to work until an agreement is reached.
Perhaps more importantly, the vote was the latest—and most damaging—setback for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). Its rank and file members are centrists and the most liberal – convicted his strategy for closing on Sunday night.
Schumer has increasingly become the main villain of the rising left within the Democratic Party, and his position as minority leader appears increasingly weak.
A testament to how toxic ending the shutdown will be for Democrats is the fact that not a single Democratic senator who voted Sunday to begin the process of reopening the government will be re-elected in 2026.
Cortez-Masto, Fetterman and Hasan won't have to run again until 2028, and Cain, Rosen and King won't have to run again until 2030. Shaheen and Durbin resign.
Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), the most endangered Democratic incumbent, voted no.
Voting was open for more than an hour to allow Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who was in Texas during the brutal three-way primary battle, to travel to Washington.
The Senate must obtain unanimous consent on the temporary agreements to ensure speedy passage, but a vote on final passage is likely to take place by midweek. The amended bill must then be passed by the House of Representatives.
Bradley Jay is deputy political editor at Breitbart News. Follow him further X/Twitter And Instagram @BradleyADJ.
