CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Virginia’s junior U.S. Senator Tim Kaine is among a group of ten Democrats who agreed on a 60-40 vote ending a filibuster on a House-passed continuing resolution to reopen the federal government while senior Senator Mark Warner is opposed.

The development is a rare divergence from the two who usually agree on major policy.

The resolution includes a Trump Administration commitment to rehire federal workers fired during the shutdown while promising a Senate floor vote on continuing the Obamacare subsidies that expired September 30.

In a statement, Kaine said, “This deal guarantees a vote to extend Affordable Care Act premium tax credits, which Republicans weren’t willing to do. Lawmakers know their constituents expect them to vote for it, and if they don’t, they could very well be replaced at the ballot box by someone who will.”

Kaine continued, “This legislation will protect federal workers from baseless firings, reinstate those who have been wrongfully terminated during the shutdown, and ensure federal workers receive back pay, as required by a law I got passed in 2019. That’s a critical step that will help federal employees and all Americans who rely on government services.”

In a Monday morning conference call with Virginia press, Kaine said the major development that makes him believe Republicans are open to negotiating is the White House engaged with discussions last week.

One of the victories he claims is while Senators were negotiating SNAP, ACA and other issues, none were addressing federal workers.

So, he brought to the table not only to bring federal workers that had been fired back to work, and all back pay for the workers furloughed in according with 2019 law, but also got agreement to stop DOGE-initiated and President Trump-continued firings of federal workers.

“The reason it took us 40 days to get (here) is the President refused to engage, ” Kaine said.

“After the election results last week, after the economy showing warning signs because of his wrecking ball, after his plunging popularity, President Trump engaged and even delivered a commitment to me they didn’t want to make but they needed my vote, and they gave me a commitment for federal employees to get my vote that they didn’t want to make.”

He said things dramatically changed last week.

“He told the Republican Senators the morning after the election, he had them over for breakfast and told them… we got creamed last night because of the shutdown, we’ve got to get out of this shutdown.”

Kaine was making his federal employee appeal on the phone with the President’s Chief of Staff Susie Wyles and Senate Republican leadership Wednesday morning, “They had a wake-up call, and on Wednesday morning they changed their tune.”

Speaking about what he said the past few weeks, “I said if the President engages, we’re going to be done with this in a matter of days, and they engaged Wednesday morning and by Sunday night we had a deal.”

“They could have engaged five days before September 30 and we would have had a deal.”

Warner released a statement saying, “I appreciate that this proposal includes important language preventing further mass layoffs of federal employees. That’s a critical step in protecting our public servants from this administration’s campaign of retribution, and something I’ve long pushed for.”

Warner continued, “But I cannot support a deal that still leaves millions of Americans wondering how they are going to pay for their health care or whether they will be able to afford to get sick. We owe the American people more than a short-term fix that leaves working families staring down a health care crisis, and simply kicking the can down the road is not good enough. Families are already struggling with rising prices on everything from groceries to housing. I will keep working in the Senate to bring costs down and relieve the pressure on working families who are already paying more because of President Trump’s policies that are driving prices up instead of lowering them.”

Kaine said he doesn’t fault anyone who disagrees with him, but he feels really good about what’s going to be done in statutory language to be signed by the President.

However, he feels good about the decision he’s made because Republican leaders had a red line that there would be no ACA negotiation until government was reopened.

After taking the beating, they took last week in the elections, they came to the table with White House on the phone.

“So, if we had kept the government shut down for another week would they have relented? No. Another month? No.”

“The one thing I could have guaranteed, though, is that SNAP beneficiaries would suffer more, federal workers would miss more paychecks, air traffic control would have been more chaotic,” Kaine said.

“When you run into a red line in negotiation that they’re not going to change, you don’t beat your head repeatedly against the red line, you try to find areas where you can progress that are not behind the red line.”

With the negotiations on the continuing resolution, Kaine said they’re able to fully fund SNAP “and other important programs, even undoing some of the damage Republicans had done in the reconciliation bill, and we’re able to get a guaranteed vote on a Democratic proposal to fix health care within a month.”

He said there’s no guarantee the bill will pass, but “All Americans will get to see this debate when it’s on center stage under the spotlight and there’s no background noise of all the shutdown affects drawing people’s attention away from the health care fight.”

“That’s what we got, and together with the appropriations wins and my protection for federal employees, that was enough to get me to yes.”

“The 320,000 Virginia federal employees are going to come back to work with back pay, and their families who were counting on that, and all these folks who now have a guarantee of no RIFs going forward, they don’t view that as a pinky promise. That’s statutory language that is going in the bill that is going to be signed by the President.”

He feels the resolution could pass the Senate by the end of the day Tuesday, and Speaker Mike Johnson he said has told the House to get back to Washington to take this up.

“So, I have a feeling by the end of this week… the bill will be over on the President’s desk.”