It's all over in the Senate, at least. The cave on Chuck Schumer's stupid and pointless gesture has come to its predictable conclusion.
The vote for final passage, which only required a simple majority, is interesting. The same Senate Democrats who voted to break the filibuster also voted for the deal that will end the Schumer Shutdown:
The Senate passed a bill to reopen the federal government Monday evening, taking the next step toward ending the longest shutdown in U.S. history.
The chamber agreed to speed up the process to pass a bipartisan agreement struck over the weekend. The measure will now head to the House, which is expected to take it up later this week after staying away from Washington for more than 50 days.
“I could spend an hour talking about all the problems we’ve seen, which have snowballed the longer this shutdown has gone on,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) said in a floor speech Monday. “But all of us, Democrat and Republican, who voted for last night’s bill are well aware of the facts, and I am grateful that the end is in sight.”
The bill passed 60-40, with seven Democrats and Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) joining Republicans to pass it. One Republican, Sen. Rand Paul (Kentucky) voted no.
The bill now passes to the House, where the narrow majority might present some issues for passage. As I wrote earlier, Donald Trump has gotten ahead of that by endorsing the package:
It will still take days to reopen the government. Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday urged House members — who have not held a vote in nearly two months as they took an extended recess during the shutdown — to begin the process of returning to Washington “right now.”
At the White House, Mr. Trump said that he approved of the plan.
“We’ll be opening up our country very quickly,” he said, calling the package “very good.”
Right now, the shortest estimate for getting the House into full session is 36 hours or so. That puts the end of the shutdown sometime on Wednesday.
Johnson sounded confident that he has the votes among the House GOP to pass this bill. Rep. Ralph Norman reversed his earlier objection today, which signals that Johnson has a good chance of muscling it through. However, the support for the bill itself from so-called 'moderates' among Senate Democrats might portend votes from Hakeem Jeffries' own caucus too.
Stay tuned. We'll have more tomorrow as developments emerge.
Editor’s Note: After more than 40 days of screwing Americans, a few Dems have finally caved. The Schumer Shutdown was never about principle—just inflicting pain for political points. They own this.
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