By Sarah Ferris, Ellis Kim

(CNN) — Both chambers of Congress have now voted to end the longest-ever federal shutdown, sending a funding bill to reopen the government to President Donald Trump for his signature.

The House voted Wednesday night to give final approval to a short-term bill to reopen the government after a record 43 days, ending a six-week bitter stalemate over the fate of an Obamacare program loathed by Republicans.

Back in Washington for the first time since mid-September, nearly every Republican, along with a handful of Democrats, voted for the bill, which sets up a new funding cliff in Congress on January 30, but some critical programs ensnared in the recent shutdown will be immune from future political fights as the bill provides funding for a few key agencies through the remainder of fiscal year 2026. The final vote was 222 to 209.

The Democrats who voted in favor were: Reps. Jared Golden, Adam Gray, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Henry Cuellar, Tom Suozzi and Don Davis. GOP Reps. Thomas Massie voted and Greg Steube against the bill.

The SNAP and WIC programs, which deliver food and nutrition services to tens of millions of Americans, as well as veterans services, would continue to be funded if the government were to shut down again over the next few months.

In the end, most Democrats in Congress loudly protested the bill, which offers zero guarantee that Washington will act to extend expiring enhanced health care subsidies that help Americans pay down their premiums.

Speaker Mike Johnson corralled almost all Republicans behind the bill, despite sharp complaints from some of his members over a contentious provision added by Senate Republicans that allowed senators to retroactively sue the Department of Justice for obtaining phone records during a Biden-era probe – potentially amounting to a major financial windfall for those lawmakers.

Johnson himself said he was blindsided by the language, and he said he didn’t know about it until the Senate had already passed the package.

“I was shocked by it, I was angry about it,” the speaker said, though he added that he did not believe Senate Majority Leader John Thune added it in a nefarious manner. “I think it was a really bad look, and we’re going to fix it in the House.”

To win over conservative holdouts, Johnson vowed that the House would take a future vote to strip that language — though it’s unclear if the Senate would take it up. Republicans like Rep. Chip Roy of Texas ultimately agreed not to amend the language in the current stopgap bill, since it would require the Senate to return to Washington to vote again and delay the end of the shutdown.

Conservatives like Roy had blasted that provision as “self-dealing,” since it would award senators $500,000 or more in damages for each violation by the government if their lawsuit is successful. The amendment appeared to benefit eight senators in particular who had been subpoenaed by the previous administration into investigations into Trump’s first term.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations panel, accused those eight senators of voting “to shove taxpayer dollars into their own pockets – $500,000 for each time their records were inspected.”

The end of the government shutdown will usher in a frenetic few weeks of work for the House, which has been largely shuttered since late September. As part of the GOP’s pressure campaign on Democrats, Johnson had decided to keep all members out of Washington until Senate Democrats agreed to back the GOP’s existing funding plan.

Now, Republicans and Democrats have just four weeks in session before the end of the year — when those Obamacare tax credits expire. But there are plenty of other deadlines, including Congress’ farm bill and a slew of expiring energy credits.

House Republicans are also eager to pass as many spending bills as possible to improve their negotiating stance with the Senate ahead of that next deadline on January 30.

Johnson also faces another hot-button issue: the question of how Congress should handle the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Not long before the votes to reopen the government got underway, a newly elected Democrat — Rep. Adelita Grijalva — became the critical 218th signature to force a vote to compel the Justice Department to release all of its case files related to Epstein.

Johnson announced to reporters soon after Grijalva signed the petition that he will put a bill compelling the Department of Justice to release all of its Epstein case files on the House floor next week – earlier than expected, and after an extraordinary White House pressure campaign earlier Wednesday failed to convince any Republicans to remove their name from the petition.

The effort coincided with intensifying scrutiny over the Epstein files in the House. Earlier Wednesday, House Democrats on the Oversight panel released new emails that showed Epstein had repeatedly mentioned Trump by name in private correspondence, and then the GOP-led committee released 200,000 pages of documents the panel received from Epstein’s estate.

The-CNN-Wire
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