Who are the 8 Senate Democrats voting to reopen the government, and why?

Eight Senate Democrats voted Sunday night to end their party’s filibuster that has kept the government shut down for 41 days and counting. 

The procedural vote is just the first step in Congress reopening the government, but it removes the primary blockade for achieving that goal. 

The eight Democrats who joined Republicans in clearing the filibuster align more toward the center than most in their party. 

One is the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate. Illinois Sen. Richard J. Durbin, the Democratic whip, is retiring after this Congress. 

So is Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire Democrat, who helped negotiate the bipartisan deal to end the stalemate.

None of the other six Democrats who joined them in breaking from the party position are up for reelection in the 2026 cycle; senators hold six-year terms. 

Democrats had been using the record-breaking shutdown to fight for an extension of enhanced Obamacare premium subsidies set to expire this year. 

Without an extension, 22 million Americans will see their out-of-pocket premiums for 2026 increase by more than double, on average, from the current year’s costs. 

The eight Democrats who abandoned the party strategy said it was not leading to the desired outcome, while the shutdown was inflicting pain on federal workers going without pay and families unable to access government benefits like food stamps.  

“After 40 days, it wasn’t going to work,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, Virginia Democrat whose state has one of the highest shares of federal workers.  

Mr. Kaine was one of five Democrats in the group of eight who had been holding out hope for a better deal until that 40th day. The other three had been consistently voting to reopen the government ever since it shut down. 

In the end, the best they all could secure was the Republican offer that had been on the table for weeks — a promise of a Senate vote on the Obamacare subsidies but no guarantee it would pass. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, South Dakota Republican, said that vote will occur “no later than the second week in December.”

Ms. Shaheen said Republicans have also agreed to let her party write the bill.

“Although I do think it’s important for us to engage with them, because we need a bipartisan bill that we know is going to get enacted to provide the relief that Americans need,” she said.

Sen. John Fetterman, Pennsylvania Democrat, was the only one of the eight who never joined his party’s strategy. He voted “yes” all 14 times the Senate tried and failed to advance a House-passed stopgap bill to fund the government through Nov. 21. 

He apologized to government workers who haven’t been paid in weeks, food stamp beneficiaries whose assistance was suspended this month and others impacted by the shutdown. 

“It should’ve never come to this. This was a failure,” Mr. Fetterman said on social media. 

Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Angus S. King Jr. of Maine, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, voted “no” on the initial stopgap vote but flipped in the second, on the eve of the shutdown, and consistently voted after that to reopen the government.

Mr. King said there was a 0% chance Republicans would agree to a deal extending the ACA tax credits while the government was shutdown, but in helping reopen it, he and his colleagues have raised the odds to around 50%. 

“I would take a reasonable chance against no chance every day,” he said. 

The remaining five Democrats — Ms. Shaheen, Mr. Kaine, Mr. Durbin, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and Jacky Rosen of Nevada — did not come to that same conclusion until Republicans rejected their party’s offer to reopen the government with a one-year extension of the enhanced Obamacare subsidies. 

“My vote today was to do two things, both equally morally important and imperative,” Ms. Hassan said. “One is to make sure that the government is functioning, so that our kids eat, so that our elderly citizens eat, so that our air traffic controllers can get some sleep and earn money, get paid while they are working, so that our veterans are protected.”

The other, she said, is to establish “a realistic platform” in which Congress can negotiate an extension of the enhanced Obamacare premium tax credits.

“And if that is not successful, then shame on the Republican Party and shame on Donald Trump,” she said.

Mr. Trump has said he opposes the advanced structure of the tax credits, which allows them to go directly to insurance companies in most cases. The president wants to redirect the subsidies to consumers, which he believes will give them more freedom over their health care choices.

Republicans have other conditions they want to negotiate, like an income cap and language ensuring the money won’t be used to subsidize abortions. The latter makes a bipartisan deal especially difficult to achieve.

The Democrats secured a few tangible victories in the deal to reopen the government.

They had helped negotiate a new spending package that would fund the legislative branch and the Departments of Agriculture and Veterans Affairs through the end of fiscal 2026 in September.

The measure, which will replace the House-passed stopgap, will fund the remaining government agencies through Jan. 30 while lawmakers continue to work on full-year bills.

“At Democrats’ urging, today’s bill is not the same one we’ve voted down 14 times,” Mr. Durbin said on social media. “Republicans finally woke up and realized their Groundhog Day needed to end.”

Five of the Democrats — Ms. Shaheen, Mr. King, Ms. Hassan, Ms. Cortez Masto and Mr. Kaine — explained during a press conference after casting their votes that one of the motivating factors was ending the shutdown’s pain and protecting against future harms. 

They secured language in the spending package to require the Trump administration to recall the thousands of employees laid off during the shutdown and to give them back pay, along with furloughed employees and those who worked during the shutdown without compensation. 

The provision also prevents the administration from issuing any new notices of reductions in force (RIFs) through the Jan. 30 stopgap end date. 

“Two million federal workers who are not uniform military now have a guarantee of no RIFs going forward, so they don’t have to go into the holiday season with anxiety about what’s going to show up on their email one morning at 5:30 a.m.,” Mr. Kaine said. “That’s a big win.”

Reopening the government will also end the shutdown harms that have hit the general population, such as flight delays and a suspension of food stamp benefits, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. 

Because the Agriculture Department, which runs SNAP, is funded for the full fiscal year in the spending deal, once it passes food benefits will flow uninterrupted through at least September. 

The November benefit suspension was the first disruption in the food stamp program since its enactment. Low-income families flocked to local food banks because they couldn’t afford to buy groceries without the government assistance. 

“These were lines that I hadn’t seen since the pandemic, and the stories were horrific,” Ms. Cortez Masto said, citing her talks with mothers trying to feed their children, struggling seniors and a man who was so “embarrassed” he wouldn’t even tell her his name. 

Ms. Rosen did not join her colleagues at the press conference or issue a public statement on Sunday’s vote. She was the most outspoken of the eight about wanting to secure a solution on the Obamacare subsidies.