General Discussion

Among the eight Senate Democrats who struck a deal with the White House and Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., four were former governors — pragmatists used to working across the aisle who argue you don’t always get what you want in legislation.

The agreement includes a “minibus” of three appropriations bills, which will fund some parts of the government through next fall. The rest of the government will be funded through Jan. 30.

The deal includes funding of the food assistance program known as SNAP for the rest of the fiscal year through September 2026, meaning families will be fed and food stamps can’t be used as leverage in any funding fight in the coming months.

The group of eight also got some wins for federal workers, who have been under siege since Trump’s inauguration, facing aggressive Department of Government Efficiency cuts and the consolidation of some agencies, like the U.S. Agency for International Development.

They got the Trump administration to agree to reinstate federal workers who were laid off during the shutdown through reductions in force, or RIFs. And they secured language barring future mass firings for the duration of the resolution that keeps the government open through January.

It’s a win for “federal employees who are not going to be traumatized by RIFs going forward,” said Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, the former governor of Virginia, a state home to nearly 150,000 civilian federal workers.

“I’ve got some folks who didn’t like the vote, but I’m going to have a whole lot of federal employees who are going back to work and they’re getting their paychecks, and they can live through the holidays without worrying that they’re going to get a bad email at 5 a.m. tomorrow morning that they’re laid off.”

“They have been living under a cloud of anxiety since Jan. 20, and we’ve lifted that cloud to some degree,” Kaine added.