WASHINGTON (TNND) — The decision by eight Senate Democrats to break with the rest of the party and vote with Republicans to reopen the government without a solution for expiring health care subsidies has roiled the party and inflamed lingering divisions about how to move it forward to regain majorities and the White House.

The Senate was finally able to break a logjam over the weekend to advance a bill to end the longest shutdown in U.S. history and start the process of moving the bill through Congress. Final passage of the bill could take several days as any single senator can object and delay the process.

The legislation has been widely panned by House Democrats, including Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who have framed it as caving to Republicans and failing to fix the issues with the expiring subsidies.

“A deal that doesn’t reduce health care costs is a betrayal of millions of Americans counting on Democrats to fight for them,” Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, wrote on X. “Accepting nothing but a pinky promise from Republicans isn’t a compromise — it’s capitulation.”

Republicans will not need any Democratic support to get the bill temporarily funding the government through the House, though it could be challenging for the GOP to do so if lawmakers break rank due to their slim majority. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said on Monday he told members to return to Washington as quickly as possible.

Democrats were emboldened by the party’s huge wins in elections last week that many took as a signal that voters wanted them to continue holding out for a better deal on the shutdown and to fight the administration harder. Combined with polling on the shutdown and Trump’s own suggestions that it was hurting Republicans, many Democrats felt they would be able to yield concessions from the GOP on the subsides.

But both sides have been stuck in their original bargaining positions and there were few implications they were changing, a factor Shaheen said helped drive her vote.

“This was the only deal on the table,” she said. “It was our best chance to reopen the government and immediately begin negotiations to extend the (Affordable Care Act) tax credits.”

The bill that advanced Sunday will reopen the government through January and included three full-year funding bills that cover veterans’ affairs, the Agriculture Department and the legislative branch. It also reversed thousands of firings of federal workers since the shutdown started and ensured all workers would receive backpay.

But it did not include any breakthroughs on the extension of expiring subsidies that will send premiums skyrocketing. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has vowed to hold a vote in December on extending them, an option he had been offering for weeks that was repeatedly rejected as it is likely to fail over GOP opposition and may not even be put up for a vote in the House even if it were to pass.

The subsidies are likely to linger as a potent political issue into 2026, where voters are still outraged over the cost of living and have shifted blame toward Republicans that control both chambers of Congress and the White House. A poll last week from health policy research firm KFF found 74% of U.S. adults are in favor of extending the credits.

“It's going to come up as an issue,” said Ray La Raja, a political science professor and co-director of the UMass Amherst poll. “These Democrats who voted (to end the shutdown) are going to be able to say, ‘look at these guys, they're cutting your health care benefits. They're making it more expensive.’ The Democrats still win there politically.”

Every Democratic senator up for reelection next year voted against the shutdown deal, a sign of things to come in the upcoming 2026 campaigns where they are likely to keep rising costs front and center.

Lawmakers’ sudden breakthrough came as consequences of the shutdown began to mount with chaos nearing at airports amid thousands of flight cancellations and food aid benefits being cut off as the administration is tied up in legal battles over whether to pay it. Despite the increasing pains to the public, there has been nearly universal condemnation of the eight Democrats who backed the stopgap bill.

It has also renewed calls for Schumer to step down or be pushed out of his position leading Senate Democrats after a similar standoff earlier this year when he led a charge to keep another government shutdown from starting over concerns about what the administration would do during it. Schumer voted against the stopgap bill and vowed to keep fighting for the enhanced subsidies, but that has not been enough to quell his critics.

“Senator Schumer is no longer effective and should be replaced. If you can’t lead the fight to stop healthcare premiums from skyrocketing for Americans, what will you fight for?” Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., wrote on X.

Each of the eight Democrats who voted to advance the bill are retiring or not up for reelection in 2026.

Three of them — Angus King of Maine, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada — have repeatedly voted to reopen the government since the shutdown started. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, along with Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, are both retiring at the end of their terms. Tim Kaine of Virginia, Jacky Rosen of Nevada and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, are not up for reelection this cycle and said the effects of the shutdown were too destructive to allow it to continue.

That determination ran counter to what the rest of the party saw as a winning shutdown strategy and highlighted the divisions within it on how to govern with Trump in the White House and Republicans in the majority.

“Usually, it's enough being the out-of-power party to hold people together. But it's a blessing and a curse if you have a more diverse party, it's easy to put together a larger coalition if they can figure that out. They haven't figured that out yet,” La Raja said.