WASHINGTON — The United States Senate voted 60-40 on Monday night, November 9, to pass a bipartisan funding package that would end the longest government shutdown in American history, sending the bill to the House of Representatives and putting the federal government on a path to reopen later this week if the House agrees. The vote was the final Senate passage of the legislation — the step beyond Sunday night's 60-40 procedural vote, reported by Awaaz Punjab, which had first broken the weeks-long deadlock.

Source: Associated Press, via The Denver Post, Nov 9, 2026

The shutdown began on October 1 and reached its 41st day on Monday. It has left hundreds of thousands of federal workers without pay, delayed and reduced food aid for millions of families, and snarled air travel across the country, with the Federal Aviation Administration ordering flight cuts at 40 major airports and more than 2,700 flights cancelled on Sunday alone. The final Senate vote, 60-40, passed with the support of nearly all of the chamber's Republicans and eight members of the Democratic caucus, who had sought — unsuccessfully — to tie government funding to an extension of the health subsidies that are due to expire at the end of the year.

Source: Reuters, Nov 9, 2026

What the bill contains

The package uses a House-passed stopgap bill as its vehicle and combines it with three full-year spending bills. Most of the federal government is funded at current levels through January 30, giving lawmakers more time to negotiate full-year bills for the rest of the fiscal year. Three areas receive full-year funding through September 30: the Agriculture Department, including the Food and Drug Administration; the Department of Veterans Affairs and military construction; and the legislative branch itself.

For ordinary families, the most immediate part is food aid. The deal fully funds the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, which serves about 42 million lower-income Americans, through the end of the fiscal year — after a shutdown month in which benefits were delayed and cut for the first time in the program's history. The bill also reverses the Trump administration's mass firings of federal workers carried out since the shutdown began on October 1, restores those jobs, guarantees back pay for workers who went without pay for more than a month, and prevents any further federal layoffs until January 30.

The health-care fight the deal did not settle

The one major issue the deal does not resolve is health care. It does not extend the Affordable Care Act premium subsidies that are due to expire at the end of December — January 1 — which had been the central demand of Senate Democrats throughout the shutdown. Instead, Senate Majority Leader John Thune committed to holding a Senate vote on extending the subsidies no later than the second week of December, a vote with no guaranteed outcome. Reuters noted the subsidies benefit about 24 million Americans. The agreement sets up that December vote, but it does not guarantee the subsidies will continue, and the House has made no matching promise — a gap that drew, in the Associated Press's words, searing criticism from within the Democratic Party against the small group of Democrats who ratified the deal with Republicans.

Background: how the longest shutdown reached this point

The standoff lasted more than six weeks after funding for federal agencies expired on October 1. Fourteen earlier procedural votes on the House-passed funding bill had gone nowhere before Sunday's breakthrough. The deal was brokered over the weekend by Thune, Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, New Hampshire Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, independent Senator Angus King of Maine, and White House negotiators. Pressure had been building in plain sight: about 1.4 million federal workers furloughed or working without pay, food banks scrambling as SNAP payments stalled, and an air-travel system buckling in the run-up to the Thanksgiving travel season. A late-October Reuters/Ipsos poll found 50 percent of Americans blamed Republicans for the shutdown, while 43 percent blamed Democrats. Reuters also noted the deal would extend funding through January 30 while the federal government remains on a path to keep adding about $1.8 trillion a year to its $38 trillion in debt.

What happens next: the House, then the President

The bill now heads to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, where Speaker Mike Johnson has said he would like to pass it as soon as Wednesday and send it on to President Trump to sign into law. Johnson urged lawmakers to start returning to Washington 'right now,' given shutdown-related travel delays, but an official notice issued after the Senate vote said the earliest the House will vote is Wednesday afternoon. 'It appears our long national nightmare is finally coming to an end,' Johnson said. Trump has expressed support for the bill. Until the House passes it and the President signs it, the government remains shut: federal workers remain unpaid, and the FAA flight cuts at 40 airports remain in force.

For Awaaz Punjab's readers in the United States — including Punjabi families in California, New York, New Jersey, Texas and Washington, and the truckers who cross the country under them — the practical stakes are the back pay owed to federal workers, the restoration of full SNAP benefits for the roughly 42 million people who depend on them, and the easing of the flight cancellations that have hit travellers at every major hub. All three now depend on a single House vote expected on Wednesday evening.

This report follows Awaaz Punjab's earlier coverage of Sunday night's procedural vote that first broke the deadlock. Read: Senate votes 60-40 to advance deal to end record 40-day shutdown