Without new funding or an extension, vast portions of the government — including functions of the Transportation Department, Internal Revenue Service and National Park Service — would go offline. Military service members would miss paychecks but would be required to remain on the job.
The Republican-controlled House has passed five of the dozen bills — all on virtually party-line votes with such steep budget cuts and culture-war policy provisions that they stand no chance of becoming law. The Democratic-controlled Senate has not passed any appropriations bills but has greenlighted seven of them through the committee process with broad bipartisan support.
With lawmakers on recess all of August, Congress will almost definitely need a stopgap funding bill, called a “continuing resolution” or CR, to avert a shutdown. They come back to Washington just weeks before the deadline.
“Aren’t we in this territory every year?” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told The Washington Post. “My assumption is we’re doing a CR.”
Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), chair of the House Appropriations Committee, in June said he hoped a final government funding package could come together between November and the start of the new year, acknowledging that a temporary funding bill would be necessary.
Key negotiators broadly agree on potentially appropriating extra money for disaster relief, including to reconstruct Baltimore’s collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge, rebuild parts of Hawaii decimated by fires, and address other areas of the country harmed by storms and tornadoes.
That doesn’t mean the funding process will be easy, though.
Cole and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) have put forward legislation with major boosts for the Defense Department and veterans’ programs, while cutting public health, education, transportation, housing and the State Department. The bills jettison a deal struck last year with President Biden to exclude $69 billion in funding from counting against annual budget caps.
The bills also include archconservative policy provisions on cultural issues. The Defense Department bill would prohibit funding for military service members to travel for reproductive health care and for activities that “bring discredit upon the military, such as a drag queen story hour for children or the use of drag queens as military recruiters.”
The State Department bill would also prohibit the use of federal funds to help civilians from Gaza settle in the United States. Another bill prevents funding from going to the FBI’s diversity and inclusion department.
Those policies and the funding cuts stake out hard-right bargaining positions for the CR fight to come.
Democrats broadly support a short-term bill that would extend funding past Election Day but end before the end of the year. That would allow both parties and both chambers to reevaluate their spending priorities — and political leverage — with the results of November’s elections in mind.
House Republicans, meanwhile, are open to a longer CR that extends into the new year, banking on former president Donald Trump to retake the White House and galvanize conservative control of Washington.
Members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus have proposed a longer temporary spending bill with legislation attached that would ban noncitizens from voting in federal elections — a practice that is already illegal. That approach is a nonstarter for Democrats in the Senate, where Republicans might also reject it, too. The GOP is bullish on its chances of winning control of the upper chamber and having a larger say in funding bills in the next Congress.
Lawmakers from both parties and both chambers, though, are wary of extending funding too far into 2025 and forcing the next president to burn political capital just to keep the government open.