What’s in the Senate shutdown deal

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The nation is on the verge of shaking off its longest government shutdown in history.

The U.S. Senate passed a bill Monday night to end the shutdown by a vote of 60-40, with seven Democrats and one independent voting with Republicans to get the package over filibuster blocks.

The deal came together in spurts. Appropriators spent long days hammering out three specific attached spending bills that helped some senators get on board. Separately, a small group of 11 Democratic caucus members met repeatedly to see if they could find a way to support an end to the shutdown.

By vote time, eight of them remained.

So what is in this thing? First, the big headlines. This deal:

• Funds most of the government through Jan. 30.
• Funds the Department of Veterans Affairs, military construction, the Department of Agriculture, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Congress itself through September 2026.
• Orders that states be reimbursed for any federal expenses they paid during the shutdown. (That includes states that paid for SNAP benefits during the shutdown.)
• Reverses mass layoffs of federal workers during the shutdown and blocks new mass layoffs until the end of January.

Last night, I took the time to read through the specifics more closely. The deal is a combination of four separate parts.

• The “Continuing Appropriations Act” to fund most agencies through Jan. 30. Here is a summary. And the full text, which is 31 pages long.
• Agriculture and FDA appropriations. Summary is here, while the full 141-page text can be read here.
• Veterans and military construction appropriations. Summary is here. The full 92-page text can be read here.
• Legislative branch appropriations, meaning for Congress. Summary is here. The full 64-page text can be found here.

In total, it is 328 pages of legislative text. If you read all the documents, including explanatory statements, that stacks up to a good bit more. But it’s not that long by modern “big bill” standards.

A few things stood out outside the headlines.

Mass layoffs during the shutdown. The bill orders these be reversed quickly, within five days of this bill becoming law.

Security. There is a cargo plane’s worth of cash being infused into security for officials.

• U.S. Marshals. $30 million extra to protect judges and executive branch officials for the next two fiscal years.
• Supreme Court. An additional $28 million for the justices’ security.
• U.S. Capitol Police. $30 million for mutual aid and training, as well as a $45 million increase over last year’s funding.
• Members of Congress. About $203 million for member security, distributed via each chamber.

Senators can sue. Noticeably left out of both the summary and the explanatory statement for the legislative appropriations bill is Section 213 of the bill. (Pg. 52 of the text.) This orders that any phone or other communication providers must tell a Senate office if prosecutors have asked for disclosure of Senate data. And senators can sue for $500,000 if this does not happen, including retroactively to 2022.

This seems to allow lawsuits from eight Republican senators whose data was subpoenaed in 2023 as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 probe of President Donald Trump and the 2021 Capitol attack. The Republican senators only learned of this move this year, infuriating them.

Earmarks. The bill contains scores and scores of earmarks, or “community projects” designated by lawmakers for their states or districts. The easiest way to see these are in the accompanying explanatory statements. In the USDA statement, go to page 35. In the Veterans and Military Construction statement, go to page 33.

A few odds and ends.

• Ban on unregulated hemp products. The bill contains a wide-reaching ban on hemp products with THC in them. These had been intentionally unregulated but some lawmakers had criticized them as unexpectedly intoxicating and dangerous in the years since. The industry is railing against the move, claiming it could suffocate their businesses, with some saying it is causing “a lot of panic.”
• WIC. The program providing nutrition to millions of low-income mothers, infants and children gets a funding increase of $603 million, to a total $8.2 billion. This means all eligible individuals should get full benefits.
• Military construction. The military received an increase of $844 million over Trump’s budget request for “critical infrastructure investments.” That’s $1.1 billion over its most recent funding level.
• New Chinese technology ban. The VA is banned in the bill from buying technology from listed Chinese manufacturers.

And there is much more. These are just some of the highlights.

What’s next. These bills are like onions — keep peeling and we will find more.

Meantime, watch the House of Representatives on Wednesday evening. That is when this bill is scheduled for a likely final vote in Congress.