Several Democrats in both the Senate and the House broke with most of their party and voted with Republicans to pass the deal that ended the recent record-length government shutdown in late 2025.

Key Senate Democrats

These Democratic and Democratic-caucusing senators voted for the funding package that advanced and ultimately ended the shutdown.

  • John Fetterman (Pennsylvania)
  • Catherine Cortez Masto (Nevada)
  • Jacky Rosen (Nevada)
  • Maggie Hassan (New Hampshire)
  • Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire)
  • Tim Kaine (Virginia)
  • Dick Durbin (Illinois)
  • Angus King (Maine, independent who caucuses with Democrats)

These senators backed the bipartisan deal that funded the government through January 30 and reversed shutdown-related federal layoffs, even as most Democrats initially opposed the Republican-driven approach.

Key House Democrats

A smaller group of House Democrats also crossed party lines and voted for the compromise legislation to reopen the government.

  • Jared Golden (Maine)
  • Don Davis (North Carolina)
  • Henry Cuellar (Texas)
  • Tom Suozzi (New York)
  • Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Washington)
  • Adam Gray (California)

These representatives mostly come from competitive or swing districts and framed their votes as necessary to pay federal workers, restore food assistance, and end mounting hardship from the shutdown, even if they disliked parts of the Republican plan.

Why Their Votes Mattered

  • The shutdown was the longest in modern U.S. history, and these defections provided the margin Republicans needed to move the funding package through Congress.
  • Many of these Democrats emphasized protecting Affordable Care Act premium tax credits and reversing or preventing federal worker layoffs as reasons to accept an imperfect deal.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.