WASHINGTON — President Trump on Wednesday night signed into law a spending package that will end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, a legislative victory for Republicans who did not budge on Democrats’ demands on healthcare.
“Today, we are sending a clear message that we will never give in to extortion,” Trump said during a bill signing ceremony in the Oval Office.
Flanked by Republican leaders, Trump signed the measure within two hours of it narrowly passing the House on a 222-209 vote. The president said it was an “honor” to reopen the government before ending the event without taking questions.
Six Democrats broke ranks and voted to approve the bill, including one Californian — Rep. Adam Gray, who represents the 13th District in the San Joaquin Valley. The 13th is a swing district that had been represented by Republican John Duarte. Gray defeated him last year by 187 votes.
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Gray said in a statement that he voted for the legislation because he was worried that Trump was “using vulnerable Americans as political leverage,” and the deal included funding for services he thought were crucial for his constituents.
“Congress could have rejected this deal, kept the government closed and watched families go hungry while we make a point,” Gray said. “Instead, I accepted an imperfect compromise that protects the most vulnerable for a whole year while we keep working to save health care.”
The president’s signature marked the end of a government shutdown that for 43 days left thousands of federal workers without pay, millions of low-income Americans uncertain on whether they would receive food assistance, and travelers facing delays at airports.
The vote, which began Wednesday evening, also capped a frenetic day on Capitol Hill in which lawmakers publicly released a trove of records from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate and welcomed the newest member of Congress, a Democrat from Arizona who was key in forcing a vote to demand the Justice Department release all the Epstein files.
The spending package signed by the president will fund the government through Jan. 30 and reinstate federal workers who were laid off during the shutdown. It will also guarantee back pay for federal employees who were furloughed or worked without pay during the budget impasse.
The package does not include an extension to Affordable Care Act healthcare tax credits that are set to expire at the end of the year — a core demand Democrats tried to negotiate during the more than six weeks the government was shut down.
“This fight is not over, we are just getting started,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in his closing argument on the House floor. “We will fight until we win this battle for the American people.”
Jeffries, a Democrat from New York, predicted that if Republicans do not work with Democrats to address rising healthcare costs in the weeks and months ahead, voters will oust them from office in next year’s midterm elections.
“We believe, as Democrats, that healthcare has to be a right and right that’s affordable and available to Americans in the United States,” Jeffries said.
Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, urged Republicans to vote in favor of the shutdown deal and told members that the shutdown was “pointless.”
“Let’s get this done!” Johnson said in his closing argument.
If the tax credits expire, premiums will more than double on average for more than 20 million Americans who use the healthcare marketplace, according to independent analysts at the research firm KFF.
Another point of contention during the floor debate was a provision in the funding bill that will allow senators to sue the federal government if their phone records are obtained without them being notified.
The provision, which is retroactive to 2022, appears to be tailored for eight Republican senators who last month found their phone records have been accessed as part of a Biden-era investigation into the attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021.
If they successfully sue, each violation would be worth at least $500,000, according to the bill language.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of the senators whose phone records were accessed, said Wednesday that he will “definitely” sue when the legal avenue becomes available.
“You think I’m going to settle this thing for a million dollars? No. I want to make it so painful, no one ever does this again,” Graham told reporters.
Several Democrats slammed the provision on the House floor. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said it was “unconscionable” to vote in favor of the spending bill with that language tucked in.
“How is this even on the floor? How can we vote to enrich ourselves by stealing from the American people?” she said.
Some House Republicans were caught off guard by the provision and said they disagreed with the provision. The concern was enough to get Johnson to announce that House Republicans plan to fast-track legislation to repeal the provision next week.
Epstein files loomed large over vote
The House began voting on the bill after Johnson swore Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) into office, after refusing to do so for seven weeks.
When Grijalva walked onto the House floor and was greeted with applause by colleagues cheering her name, she immediately called out Johnson for delaying her taking the oath of office.
“One individual should not be able to unilaterally obstruct the swearing-in of a duly elected member of Congress for political reasons,” Grijalva said, while equating the decision to “an abuse of power.”
After finishing her remarks, the Democrat immediately signed a petition to force a House floor vote demanding the full release of the Justice Department’s files on Jeffrey Epstein.
Her signature was the final action needed to force a floor vote. The move is sure to reignite a pressure campaign to release documents tied to Epstein, just hours after House Democrats and Republicans released a trove of records from the Epstein estate.
The documents included emails from the late convicted sex offender that said Trump had “spent hours” with a victim at his house and Trump “knew about the girls.”
“Justice cannot wait another day,” Grijalva said.
In a social media post Wednesday, Trump accused Democrats of trying to use the “Jeffrey Epstein Hoax” as a distraction from their failed negotiations during the government shutdown.
“There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else, and any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening our Country, and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats!” Trump wrote.
