US House to vote on deal to end longest government shutdown in history

WASHINGTON: The House of Representatives will try to end the longest government shutdown in US history on Wednesday (Nov 12), with a vote on a stopgap funding package to restart disrupted food assistance, pay hundreds of thousands of federal workers and revive a hobbled air-traffic control system.

Republicans currently hold a narrow 219-213 majority in the House. But President Donald Trump’s support for the Bill is expected to keep his party together in the face of vehement opposition from House Democrats, who are angry that a long standoff launched by their Senate colleagues failed to secure a deal to extend federal health insurance subsidies.

Eight Senate Democrats on Monday broke with party leadership to pass the funding package, which would extend funding through Jan 30, leaving the federal government on a path to keep adding about US$1.8 trillion a year to its US$38 trillion in debt.

“My urgent plea of all my colleagues in the House, that means every Democrat in the House, is to think carefully, pray and finally do the right thing,” Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, who kept his chamber in recess for nearly two months as a pressure tactic in shutdown negotiations, told reporters.

House Democrats remain adamantly opposed, angered by the Senate deal that came less than a week after Democrats won high-profile elections in New Jersey, Virginia and New York City that many thought strengthened their odds of winning an extension of health insurance subsidies. 

While the deal sets up a December vote on those subsidies in the Senate, Johnson has made no such promise in the House.

“They own the mess that has been created in the United States of America,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said at a press conference.

Neither side appears to have won a clear victory. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday found that 50 per cent of Americans blamed Republicans, while 47 per cent blamed Democrats.

A vote on a Bill to end the shutdown is expected at around 7pm ET on Wednesday. If approved by the House, the funding package would have to be signed into law by Trump. The White House said he supports the Bill.

FROM SHUTDOWN BACK TO EPSTEIN

The return of the House also means that Johnson could soon face a vote to release all unclassified records related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, something he and Trump have resisted up to now.

Johnson on Wednesday will swear in Democrat Adelita Grijalva, who won a September special election to fill the Arizona seat of her late father, Raul Grijalva. She is expected to provide the final signature needed for a petition to force a House vote on the issue.

That means that after performing its constitutionally mandated duty of keeping the government funded, the House could once again be consumed by a probe into Trump’s former friend, whose life and 2019 death in prison have spawned countless conspiracy theories.

The funding package would allow eight Republican senators to seek hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages for alleged privacy violations stemming from the federal investigation of the Jan 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by Trump’s supporters. 

It retroactively makes it illegal in most cases to obtain a senator’s phone data without disclosure and allows those whose records were obtained to sue the Justice Department for US$500,000 in damages, along with attorneys’ fees and other costs.

The funding vote is expected late on Wednesday, and is likely to face some token Republican opposition, from Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky hardliner who opposed an initial House funding package in September along with fellow Representative Victoria Spartz of Indiana.

But the hardline House Freedom Caucus, often a stumbling block to spending Bills, is not expected to attempt to block it, said Representative Andy Harris of Maryland, the group’s chairman, who added: “I believe we’re all going to be on board with this.”