The bill includes a mid-December vote on health subsidies, which was at the heart of the disagreement between Republicans and Democrats.
The U.S. Congress passed an emergency budget agreement after 43 days of government shutdown, the longest in U.S. history.
President Donald Trump signed the bill into law late Nov. 12, hours after the House voted to approve emergency funding to government services until Jan. 30, 2026, while Congress discusses a complete budget for the year.
It is possible that another shutdown may occur if Congress fails to agree on further spending by that time.
“Today, we’re sending a clear message that we’ll never give in to extortion,” Trump said before signing the bill.
A disagreement had arisen between Democrats and Republicans over the Republican-controlled Congress’s reluctance to include the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in the emergency funding bill, which is set to expire at the end of the year.
Democrats refused to sign the bill unless it was included, while Republicans said it was a separate issue from funding the government.
The ACA, also known as Obamacare, is a health care reform law first enacted into law in 2010 by President Barack Obama. It regulates the health insurance industry, mandating insurance for most Americans, while creating subsidies for low-income recipients.
Trump is a staunch opponent of the ACA and has sought to repeal or replace it, seeing it as favoring insurance companies over patients.
“I am recommending to Senate Republicans that the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, be sent directly to the people so that they can purchase their own, much better, healthcare, and have money left over,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Nov. 8.
The government initially shut down on Oct. 1 after failing to pass a Continuing Resolution, which would have ensured federal funding till the end of the year.
“We could not support a partisan Republican spending bill that continues to gut the healthcare of the American people,” Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said on Nov. 13, on MSNBC.
On Nov. 10, after a weekend of negotiations, seven Democratic senators crossed the aisle, along with one independent, to join Republicans in meeting the 60 votes needed to advance the legislation in the Senate. The House passed it in a 222–209 vote on Nov. 12, and the president signed it two hours later.
The bill includes back pay for all federal workers and SNAP funding, a federal program used to provide food assistance to low-income families, as well as a year’s funding for the Department of Agriculture, Department of Veterans Affairs, military construction, the Food and Drug Administration, and the legislative branch.
It also guarantees a vote on the ACA in December.
The month-long shutdown didn’t come without a cost, however.
The Congressional Budget Office released an analysis on Oct. 29 predicting that the government shutdown could cost the U.S. economy up to $14 billion, reducing the GDP growth rate by 1 to 2 percentage points.
“Although most of the decline in real GDP will be recovered eventually, CBO estimates that between $7 billion and $14 billion (in 2025 dollars) will not be,” it stated. Chase Smith and Jackson Richman contributed this report.
By Stuart Liess
