WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic senators – eight in total – faced almost immediate criticism from members of their own party when they voted to allow the Senate to move forward on a compromise bill that would reopen the government.
Their decision on Sunday night was called a “betrayal” and “pathetic” by some of the most prominent members of the Democratic Party.
“In my opinion, this was a very, very bad vote,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats.
The group of defectors included several senators retiring next year, as well as a number of former governors. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana praised them Monday morning, saying they “decided to put principles above their personal politics.”
A group of moderate Democrats must have been aware of the criticism that followed when they broke with the rest of their party on the 40th day of the government shutdown. But after hours of communication — often in the Senate basement — every senator came to the same conclusion last week: It's time to end the government shutdown.
Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire
Shaheen, a senior Democrat who will retire from the Senate, has often taken the lead in negotiations on compromise legislation to end the shutdown. She has made it a priority to extend subsidies for health plans offered under the Affordable Care Act, but she also expressed reservations about voting to shut down the government.
She eventually agreed to Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota's promise to hold a vote on health care subsidies in December.
“This was the only deal on the table. This was our best chance to reopen the government and immediately begin negotiations to extend the ACA tax breaks that tens of millions of Americans rely on to lower costs,” she said at a news conference after the vote Sunday night.
Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois
Durbin is another senator who will retire after a long career in the Senate. Durbin is No. 2 in the Democratic leadership and has broken with Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York, saying the shutdowns have caused too much pain to the American people.
In a statement before the vote, Durbin, who argued that Republicans were still to blame for the shutdown, said: “This bill is not perfect, but it takes important steps to reduce the damage from the shutdown. Not only will it fully fund SNAP for the coming year, but it will also reverse the massive layoffs that the Trump administration ordered during the shutdown.”
Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia
Kaine, the former governor of Virginia, was one of the last Democrats to join the group willing to vote in favor of the bill. He said he was reviewing the legislation with his staff as early as Sunday evening. For him, the deciding factor was language in the funding bill that prevents President Donald Trump's administration from carrying out new mass layoffs, an issue that is especially important to his state.
He called the agreement a “moratorium on harm” and said he was only able to reach an agreement when negotiations reached a crunch point.
“The kind of non-strategic mass layoffs and (force reduction actions) that have traumatized federal workers since Inauguration Day, they can no longer do,” Kaine said.
Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire
Hasan, a former governor, was involved in the negotiations from the beginning and stressed that threats of federal food aid made the situation even more dire.
Hasan said she has “heard from families about the deep pain caused by the government shutdown, which has been exacerbated by a president who has illegally and repeatedly decided to cut off assistance to families who are simply trying to buy groceries.”
“After weeks of bipartisan negotiations,” she said Sunday, “I voted today to reopen the government so we can get back to work helping Granite Staters.”
The state funding bill replenishes funds for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and also ensures that states that spent their own money to keep it running during the shutdown will be reimbursed.
Senator Angus King of Maine
King is an independent candidate, a member of the Democratic Party, and a former governor. He voted to reopen the government from the start, but he also played a key role in the negotiations, including frequently hosting senators for talks in his office in the Capitol basement.
He has consistently said he opposes using government shutdowns as a negotiating tactic, but he also wants Congress to extend health care subsidies. After Republicans rejected Schumer's proposal to extend the ACA tax breaks for one year, King said it showed shutdowns weren't working.
“The question was: Does the shutdown further the goal of achieving the necessary support to extend the tax breaks? In our opinion, it will not achieve that result,” King said.
Senator Jacky Rosen of Nevada
Rosen has grown increasingly angry as the shutdown drags on and Republicans refuse to give in to Democratic demands for ACA credits. As the shutdown increasingly affected air travel, the economy of her home state of Nevada, a political swing state, also came under threat.
In a statement, Rosen said Trump and his fellow Republicans are “using their power in alarming ways to inflict unimaginable pain and suffering on working people, such as cutting off SNAP benefits entirely and destroying our travel industry by shutting down air travel entirely.”
You. Catherine Cortez Masto from Nevada
Cortez Masto is another Democrat voting to reopen the government. She also emphasized that the impacts of travel have been particularly harmful in Nevada and that the implications for food assistance programs have created a new sense of urgency. She said lines at food banks were the longest she had seen since the coronavirus pandemic.
“The stories were terrible,” she said.
Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania
Fetterman, elected in 2022, also voted to reopen the government, breaking with his party as he has on many other issues. He criticized Democrats for using the shutdown to demand concessions on health care.
“I feel sorry for our military, SNAP recipients, government employees and Capitol Police who have not been paid in weeks,” he wrote on social media. “It should never have come to this. It was a failure.”
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Follow AP's coverage of the federal government shutdown at https://apnews.com/hub/government-shutdown.
