The House returned Wednesday after a nearly two-month break and took the final step toward ending the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, but members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation, who opposed the deal because it didn’t extend health care subsidies, were not counted among the yes votes.
All five members of Connecticut’s delegation joined most House Democrats in voting against the funding package that will reopen the government after 43 days. They rejected the Senate’s shutdown deal mainly because it made no guarantee to extend enhanced premium subsidies that will soon expire for those on Affordable Care Act health plans — or in Connecticut, the state’s marketplace Access Health CT. They also objected to the absence of submarine funding in the measure.
As part of the deal, Senate Republican leadership promised to hold a vote by the second week of December on an extension, though the House hasn’t committed to such a vote. The funding package also includes three separate bills to fund parts of the government through fiscal year 2026, in addition to a short-term bill for the remaining agencies only through Jan. 30.
The bill does guarantee back pay for furloughed federal workers — a requirement of a 2019 law — though President Donald Trump has suggested at times they might not get paid. It also reverses layoffs that occurred during the shutdown, which were already paused by federal judges. The bill passed in a nearly party-line vote, 222-209. Trump will sign the bill Wednesday night, marking the official end to the shutdown.
“The whole exercise was pointless, it was wrong, it was cruel,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. said shortly before the vote, noting the airline disruptions and missed paychecks for federal workers. “We’re not going to let them succeed in that game.”
The fate of health care subsidies is uncertain at best. They are set to expire on Dec. 31 if there’s no congressional action. If they expire, those who only receive the enhanced tax credit would see their premiums rise in 2026, while those who earn less than 400% of the federal poverty level would get less assistance than they do now.
In the coming weeks, House Democrats will try to force a vote on the issue through a difficult procedural move. Across the U.S. Capitol, the Senate is expected to take it up, though passage in that chamber is far from guaranteed.
But Democrats, including those in Connecticut, don’t want to stop fighting for an outcome they believe their constituents want, particularly after their strong showing in last week’s elections in the state and across the country.
“I don’t think we can concede defeat just based on what [House Speaker] Mike Johnson is going to do,” U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-5th District, said. “I think we keep doing what we’re doing, making sure that the American people know what’s at stake.”
Health care fight continues
In a last-ditch effort, House Democrats are going to use a rarely used — and rarely successful — procedure to force a floor vote as the minority party. By using the vehicle known as a discharge petition, Democrats will need to garner 218 signatures to secure a vote on a three-year extension of the subsidies.
That means they’ll need at least a few Republicans to sign on, which will be a tough sell. Some moderate Republicans, however, have been supportive of a one-year subsidies extension through a bipartisan bill.
Senate GOP leadership promised to hold a vote on the ACA enhanced subsidies by the second week of December, but it’s unclear if enough Republican senators would support such a measure. If all Senate Democrats backed the bill, they would need to sway seven GOP senators to get it to clear the 60-vote threshold.
It’s even more unlikely the House will take it up before the subsidies expire at the end of next month. A vote in the House wasn’t part of the shutdown deal, and Speaker Johnson hasn’t made any commitments.
“I’m not promising anybody anything. I’m going to let this process play out,” Johnson said at a recent press conference.
Connecticut Democrats have vowed to keep pushing for an extension of the subsidies if the effort fails next month.
Congress could be grappling with these same issues early next year since short-term funding for most government agencies runs out by the end of January. If lawmakers can’t pass the rest of the full-year appropriations bills, they would need to once again rely on another funding patch known as a continuing resolution.
“When we come to Jan. 30, we will see what progress has been made. Johnson said he won’t guarantee a vote in the House. The Senate says they will have a vote. Do I trust any of them? Hell no,” U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3rd District, said.
As the ranking member on the House Appropriations Committee, DeLauro plays a major role in negotiating the remaining nine spending bills and has a little over two months to hash out an agreement with Republican lawmakers on the committee.
With the House on recess for more than 50 days, DeLauro said they lost critical time on negotiations. And there’s not much time left in the year given the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.
“Fifty four days, we could have been working on appropriations bills. We have nine more bills to go,” DeLauro said. “So we will see. My concern is that we’re going to be here in the same situation on Jan. 30.”
That leaves little time for work on appropriations and Democrats’ push for a subsidies extension with the next funding deadline set for Jan. 30.
“We should have been working on this literally every day before now. We should have been working on this when we knew the subsidies were going to expire,” Hayes said. “We could have had bipartisan conversations.”
“I think that we’re going to still be fighting. I know that I’m going to keep fighting to try to get these health care subsidies for my constituents,” she continued. “I’m hoping that we don’t end up in another shutdown situation because people know how devastating that is, but that means we gotta work every day until then."
No funding for Columbia-class subs
U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, noted the omission of funding for the Columbia-class submarine program as another red flag. He said the Senate “dropped the ball” on that front in the negotiations, particularly with the House out of town for the past 54 days.
When Congress passes short-term bills like continuing resolutions that keep most government functions running at current funding levels, lawmakers can use what’s known as “anomalies” to make adjustments to funding levels.
Courtney, the ranking member of the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, said that program has gotten anomalies in past budgets because it is viewed as a top priority for the U.S. Navy. And he noted that the White House had submitted its request for an anomaly of about $3.9 billion for the Columbia-class submarines, but it was left out of both the original short-term bill and the one that just passed the House.
“They made a judgment call that it was such a short-duration [continuing resolution] that it was not really as critical to have an anomaly for it,“ Courtney said, referring to the original short-term bill that funded the government through Nov. 21. “But now we’re talking Jan. 30, and that’s where the Navy’s request really made sense if you were going to treat this as the priority program which it always has been given.”
The continuing resolution, however, included anomaly funding for the Virginia-class submarine program.
Electric Boat is the lead contractor on the nuclear-powered ballistic missile vessels to replace the Groton-based company’s Ohio-class submarines. It works alongside Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia on the construction of those subs. Both of those companies work on the Virginia-class program.
The goal of the Navy is to produce two Virginia-class and one Columbia-class a year, though there are delays in the production cadence impacting that goal, according to a March report from the Congressional Research Service.
“There was an assumption that they were going to do an anomaly for it, and it’s zero,” Courtney said. “To me, it just shows not having the House here and just letting these senators who, in my opinion, didn’t pay attention to the priority of keeping schedule, given the age of those boats, that’s what happens.”
The Connecticut Mirror/Connecticut Public Radio federal policy reporter position is made possible, in part, by funding from the Robert and Margaret Patricelli Family Foundation.
This story was originally published by the Connecticut Mirror.
