Virginia’s two Democratic U.S. senators split Sunday over a vote to end the filibuster and move forward a continuing resolution that would reopen the federal government. The Senate passed the resolution Monday night.
Sen. Mark Warner voted Sunday against advancing the stopgap funding bill. Sen. Tim Kaine voted to move the legislation forward. The continuing resolution will need to be passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and signed by President Donald Trump before the government can reopen.
“I couldn’t vote for something that didn’t address the health care crisis that is imminent,” Warner said in a statement on Monday. “Virginians are already seeing their rates double and triple, who buy through the marketplace. I’ve heard too many stories about the untenable personal crisis people are going through at this point. So, I was not only a no, but I was a strong no. We’ve got to continue this fight on health care.”
Omission of language to extend Affordable Care Act health insurance tax credits from the July reconciliation bill and the current continuing resolution had led the two parties to an impasse and to the longest federal shutdown in history. Those expanded tax credits are set to expire at the end of the year, and without them, people who purchase health care insurance through the marketplace could see their premiums skyrocket.
Regardless, eight Democrats, including Kaine, joined the 52 Republicans Sunday to meet the 60-vote threshold needed to end debate and to move forward with a vote for the funding bill that would keep the government open through January. Warner is up for reelection in 2026, while Kaine won his third term in office in 2024.
Kaine’s change of heart
Kaine had repeatedly voted against the stopgap funding measure before Sunday because it had been written without “Democratic input on explicit instruction from President Trump,” he said during a video interview with reporters on Monday.
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, both Democrats, had voted repeatedly to end the government shutdown — now the longest in history — according to Politico. They were joined by Kaine and five of their colleagues after negotiators secured a number of provisions requested by Democrats.
Among those were the reversal of federal worker layoffs that took place during the shutdown and assurance that furloughed workers would receive back pay. An estimated 320,000 federal workers live in Virginia, Kaine said. He added that he was a “no” on the vote to advance the continuing resolution until those protections for federal workers were agreed to. Senate Republicans had agreed to fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, for a full year — that had led to Kaine’s change of heart as well, he said.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., assured Democrats that a vote regarding health care marketplace tax credits would take place on the Senate floor once the government reopened, before those credits are set to expire at the end of December.
“There’s no guarantee that it’s going to pass,” Kaine said, regarding that promised vote. “We have a path to a fix where, while the government was shut down, we had no path to a fix. So we’re going to follow that path.”
Kaine has seen backlash from members of his own party who believe the eight Democrats gave away their only bargaining chip in the effort to extend the health insurance tax credits. Liberal pundits have gone as far as to call on the junior U.S. senator from Virginia to resign after the Sunday evening vote.
Regardless, he said he feels “very, very good” about his decision to support the funding bill.
“Governor-elect [Abigail Spanberger] is very happy with it, and my interactions with Virginians thus far demonstrates that they are also quite happy with it,” he said. He estimated that the continuing resolution, which would end the government shutdown, could reach Trump’s desk by Saturday.
Spanberger has said that the “government needs to open and it needs to open immediately,” during an appearance on “Face The Nation” on Sunday morning.
Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, declined to say whether he would vote in favor of the continuing resolution until he was able to examine the final legislation.
Why was the government shut down?
The current health care marketplace tax credit program is set to expire at the end of December, but language to extend or rework the program was not included in the stopgap funding bill. Democrats had said that they would not support a continuing resolution that did not address the expiring program. Republicans had said they would not negotiate the tax credits as long as the government remained closed.
Federal premium tax credits were created under the Affordable Care Act in 2010 to make health insurance plans more affordable. The subsidies were originally only available to people who earned up to 400% of the federal poverty level.
In 2021, the American Rescue Plan Act removed the cap so that no one would need to spend more than 8.5% of their income on marketplace health insurance. Subsidies were also enhanced for people whose incomes fell between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level. Since then, enrollment in marketplace plans has nearly doubled.
The Inflation Reduction Act extended the enhanced credits in 2022, but they are set to expire in December. Without them, subsidies will shrink and fewer people will qualify. Enrollees could struggle to afford insurance and choose to go without, according to the Virginia Bureau of Insurance.
The Senate vote regarding the tax credits is expected to take place in December.
“We have a guarantee of a very high stakes debate and vote on the Senate floor in the full view of the American public without the background noise of shutdown consequences drowning out the critical nature of the health care debate,” Kaine said.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has expressed skepticism as to whether the U.S. House of Representatives would even take up a vote to extend the health insurance tax credits, should it pass the Senate. But Kaine said he believed the House would take up the bill.
“The speaker [of the House Mike Johnson, R-La.] could say, ‘I’m ignoring the health care needs of 25 million Americans and we’re not going to have a vote,’ but we have every Democrat in the House that wants this vote and we have a huge number of Republicans who have already written a letter to the speaker saying, ‘We need to have a vote to fix the ACA tax credits,’” Kaine said.
House members could also use a procedural maneuver called a discharge petition, which would circumvent the Speaker and force a vote on the legislation. A discharge petition is possible with a majority of House members’ signatures. Kaine said he’s counted sufficient votes in the House to achieve a discharge petition.
