WSJ What’s News - The House Prepares to Vote On Bill to End the Government Shutdown

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

P.M. Edition for Nov. 12. The House of Representatives is set to vote this evening on a spending bill that would end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. WSJ reporter Anvee Bhutani walks us through what’s in the bill. Plus, Federal Reserve officials are divided as to whether it’s inflation or the labor market that is the bigger threat to the U.S. economy, stoking division ahead of the Fed’s December meeting. Journal chief economics correspondent Nick Timiraos explains what the disagreements mean for a possible rate cut. And the U.S. has minted its last pennies. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A houseboat expected tonight would reopen the U.S. government after a record-breaking shutdown. Plus, what a divided Fed means for next month's decision on interest rate cuts. It's unusual that you see this kind of fracturing by the Fed, and it has to do with three big mysteries the economy faces right now. And it's the end of an era for the U.S. penny. It's Wednesday, November 12th. I'm Alex O'Sullough for the Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. The House is assembling for an expected vote this evening on a bill that ends the government shutdown.

The package extends funding for much of the federal government through January and includes funding for the full year for the Agriculture Department, Military Construction, and the legislative branch. For more on What's in the bill, Anvi Bhutani joins me now from Washington. Anvi, what else is in this spending? bill. Yeah, there's a couple of interesting nuggets hidden in the spending bill. One of them is that there's language that would guarantee the reversal of federal layoffs by the Trump administration during the shutdown. And it also means that there'll be no more mass firings until the end of January. And the bill will make sure that everyone that missed their paychecks was furloughed will get their back pay. This was a hot point of controversy throughout the shutdown. So this is a win for federal

workers. There's other specific language around providing more security for lawmakers. So after the shooting of Charlie Kirk, Congress decided that they should put in hundreds of millions more in security for House and Senate members, Supreme Court justices, and other executive branch officials. There are also potential $500,000 payouts that might go out to several Republican senators. There were eight Republican senators who had their phone records investigated during a Justice Department probe a couple of years ago while the Justice Department was investigating President Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. And this language means that they might get 500,000 in damages. But both Democrats and Republicans have criticized this and don't think it's appropriate.

And House Speaker Mike Johnson said today that Republicans would introduce a bill next week to repeal that provision. Now, I want to talk about the health care subsidies that were such a point of contention between Democrats and Republicans throughout the shutdown. Did Democrats get the health care subsidies they'd been fighting for? The Democrats did not get any kind of language on health care subsidies in this current spending bill. They have made a deal with the Senate majority leader, John Thune, to get a vote on a proposal for extending health care subsidies by mid-December. But the vote is contingent upon the Democrats getting some Republicans to agree with them, which we're not sure if they will do. And additionally, there's no pledge on the

House side. So the House of Representatives won't necessarily be voting on any kind of extension of health care subsidies. That was WSJ reporter, Anvi Putani. Thanks, Anvi. Thank you so much. For now, at least, the government is still shut down. And that means flights continue to be disrupted. Abigail Roman, a 31-year-old venture capital investor from Denver, told us she canceled a trip this week because she was worried about delays after a trip on Sunday that had her sitting on the tarmac at LaGuardia for two hours. I was supposed to go to a longevity conference in West Palm Beach. And my boss was like, you don't really want to go to that, I feel like. And I don't want you to get stuck in Florida. When the government does reopen, flights won't immediately go back to normal.

Allison Polly covers travel and tourism for the journal and is here to tell us why. Alison, why this delay in getting back to normal here? Well, it's not like the airlines can snap their fingers and all of a sudden just put pilots and flight crews in the right place. They've been displaced. The FAA put an order out that said a certain percentage of all air traffic needed to be cut at 40 major airports. So when the government does reopen, we'll be in a situation where they will need. to phase the flight traffic back in. How long can we expect travel disruption to go on?

We don't totally know, but at least a few days. They're going to have to phase in the air traffic, but they're going to want to do it quickly because Thanksgiving travel is coming. Both the airlines and the FAA officials and Transportation Department officials have said it's going to be several days. It's not going to be instant. How big a disruption has this been in the scheme of things? If you look at the percentage of all flights that were canceled over this period of time, it averaged about 6% according to Sirium, which is an aviation data provider. So there have definitely been times in the past where things have been worse, but there have been definite pockets of chaos and they've been unpredictable. So over the weekend, we saw at LaGuardia, for example, and in Detroit, over half of all flights were delayed.

So if you were one of those travelers, one and two travelers had a massive delay on their flight. Abigail says she has a flight planned to Kansas City on Monday for work, and she's not expecting any issues. I still have to travel on Monday, and I don't expect that isn't going to change. I just think that after the government reopens, I'm sure everything will kind of go back to normal. Alison, are airlines anticipating lingering effects that could put a dent in their bottom line? Delta Airlines CEO Ed Bastion went on CNBC today, and he said, yes, the shutdown is going to have a financial impact on the carrier and on other airlines, but it's not going to come close to wiping out their profits. There were mandated flight cuts, which meant those flights were already set to go. People had already purchased tickets. And then a lot of the airlines had a really generous refund policy, which is mandated by law. You are supposed to give people a refund if you canceled their flight and they choose not to travel. But again, that takes out of their profits. That was journal reporter Alison Polly. Thank you, Alison.

Any time. We're exclusively reporting that the Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether two proxy advisory firms, institutional shareholder services and Glass Lewis, violated antitrust laws. That's according to people familiar with the matter. The investigation is in its early stages and is looking at how the two companies steer clients on hot-button issues, such as climate-related shareholder proposals. Glass-Lewis says it received a letter from the FTC and declined to comment further.

Institutional shareholder services declined to comment. The White House is also discussing an executive order that would curb the influence proxy advisors have on shareholder votes, as we mentioned on this morning show. Coming up, is inflation or the labor market a bigger threat to the U.S. economy? The Fed isn't sure. That's after the break.

There's a split emerging within the Federal Reserve, whether it's inflation or the labor market that poses the greatest threat to the U.S. economy. That's making the possibility of further interest rate cuts look murky. The journal's chief economics correspondent Nick Timoros joins me now. Nick, after the last Fed meeting in October, Chair Jerome Powell said future rate cuts were far from certain. What's changed in the week since then? Well, nothing has really changed in the weeks since then, and that's part of the problem. Normally, the way that these divisions get reconciled is there's some data that come along that tell people, all right, maybe, you know, this is what we should be focusing on right now. People are now relying on anecdotes and surveys, and so you can sort of retreat to whatever evidence you want.

that supports your view. So jumping ahead to this December meeting, how is this split among Fed officials expected to play out? It's unusual that you see this kind of fracturing of the Fed, and it has to do with three big mysteries the economy faces right now. One, will tariff-driven price increases actually be a one-off

or could they lead to more persistent price pressures? Two, is job growth in the economy slowing? because businesses don't need workers that demand is falling, or is it because they can't find workers that supply is falling? How you come out on both of those questions could determine what you think we should do with interest rates. And then finally, how close do you think interest rates are to a sort of sweet spot that doesn't restrict or spur growth?

If you think inflation's a bigger problem, then you maybe want to have a more restrictive interest rate setting. And what do traders think? Do they suspect that a December rate cut is likely, given this division? Yes. Traders still see a December interest rate cut as more likely than not, but not nearly as overwhelming a prospect as before Powell made those comments at the October 29th press conference. And I think the reason investors see that still is not a whole lot has changed since September. when a bare majority of Fed officials penciled in the equivalent of three rate cuts this year, two of which have now been delivered.

That was WSJ Chief Economics correspondent, Nick Timrose. Thank you, Nick. Thanks for having me. The Dow closed above $48,000 today for the first time after gaining 0.7%. The S&P ticked higher, while the NASDAQ dipped 0.3% as big technology stocks like Pallenteer, Oracle, meta-platforms, and Tesla dropped. In Kiev, Ukraine has suspended its justice minister, and its energy minister resigned in the latest fallout

from allegations of corruption in the country's energy sector. The investigation threatens to undermine support for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, both at home and abroad, as Russian forces advance with new momentum on the battlefield, and he struggles to shore up backing from Ukraine's Western allies. The Justice Minister said he agreed with the suspension and that he would defend himself. And finally, after 232 years, the U.S. pennies time is up. The U.S. Mint made the last ever U.S. pennies in Philadelphia this afternoon.

This is U.S. treasurer Brandon Beach pushing the button. I'm going to do a countdown on this one. This is the last one. Three, two, one. President Trump ordered an end to penny production earlier this year, and the government has been winding down the money-losing process where the U.S. spends $3.7 to make each penny. The Treasury Department says the federal government will save $56 million a year in production costs.

But you don't have to throw away your copper coins. The $300 billion or so pennies that remain in circulation will still be legal tender. Speaking of copper, earlier today, we dropped the second episode of our Alternative Economic Indicator series, About copper. For decades, the metals price has corresponded to how the economy is doing. We dig into why that is and whether it's still true. That episode is in the What's News feed now. And that's what's news for this Wednesday afternoon. Today's show is produced by Pierre Bienname and Zoe Colkin

with supervising producer Tali Arbell. I'm Alex Oslo for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening. Thank you.