A bipartisan House majority voted 222–209 on Wednesday night to pass legislation reopening the federal government, ending the longest shutdown in American history.
And while six Democrats crossed the aisle to support the Republican-backed package, both New Hampshire Reps. Maggie Goodlander and Chris Pappas voted “no.”
The package extends federal funding through January 30 and provides full-year appropriations for the Agriculture Department, military construction, and the legislative branch. It also includes language reversing federal layoffs initiated during the Democrat-backed shutdown and imposes a moratorium on future staffing cuts.
Passage ensures paychecks for federal employees, including air-traffic controllers, and sends hundreds of thousands of furloughed workers back on the job. It also restores key services that had been halted or strained during the 43-day shutdown.
Trump signed the legislation reopening the government late Wednesday night.
Pappas posted an explanation for his no vote on social media.
“It’s going to green-light a massive spike in health insurance premiums. No family should have to choose between putting food on the table and getting the health care they need.”
In fact, nothing in the legislation passed Wednesday has any impact on health care, and the only impact on food aid was from the shutdown Pappas, Goodlander, and their fellow Democrats supported.
Republicans were unimpressed by Pappas’ explanation.
“Granite Staters won’t forget that Chuck Schumer’s puppet Chris Pappas supported the Democrat shutdown and used hungry kids as political pawns in a desperate attempt to give free healthcare to illegal aliens,” said National Republican Senatorial Committee Regional Press Secretary Samantha Cantrell.
In an odd twist, Goodlander attempted to explain her “no” vote by complaining that the short-term spending plan she rejected “doesn’t prevent any shutdowns from happening in this country again like the one we just saw.”
That’s a problematic stance for Goodlander, who supported the record-setting shutdown, denounced Democrats for ending it, and then voted to continue it.
Goodlander’s GOP opponent, Lily Tang Williams, accused the first-term Democrat of a failure of courage.
“Maggie Goodlander voted NO to open the government. She would continue to let our economy suffer, flights cancelled, our troops and federal employees not get paid, no SNAP food assistance to many Granite Staters,” Williams posted on social media. “She does not have the courage to do the right thing.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who had kept the chamber out of session since mid-September as part of the GOP’s negotiating strategy, called the shutdown “completely and utterly foolish and pointless in the end, as we said all along.”
“All that’s on the Democrats,” Johnson said.
News that the shutdown had ended was greeted with praise from America’s travel industry, which was hit hard by flight cancellations due to funding cuts for federal workers in the aviation sector.
“All government shutdowns are irresponsible — period,” said U.S. Travel Association President and CEO Geoff Freeman.
“They jeopardize essential services, erode public confidence, and inflict needless economic pain. If Congress ever goes down this foolish path again, essential federal workers — like air-traffic controllers and TSA officers — must be paid without interruption. America cannot afford another self-inflicted crisis that threatens the systems millions rely on every day.”
