The United States Capitol on the evening of September 30, 2025 (Photo: Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday approved a stopgap spending bill that will keep the government running through the fall, sending it to the Senate where lawmakers expect to rework the measure.
Congress must pass a government funding bill before the recent fiscal year begins on Oct. 1 to avoid a shutdown in the weeks before the November midterm elections.
The 220-205 the largely party-line vote represents House Republicans’ opening salvo in the negotiations, though without Democratic support it will be unable to advance in the Senate.
House Speaker Tom Cole, R-Okla., said during floor debate that GOP leaders are hopeful the resolution will pass draft law on fleeting expenditure a few months before the start of the next tax year will allow you to avoid another downtime.
(*1*) Cole said. “It contains no poison pills or partisan horsemen. It prevents harmful disruptions to our national security and the key programs our voters rely on.”
Connecticut Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the committee’s ranking member, opposed the fleeting pause, saying it would “allow Secretary of Homeland (Markwayne) Mullin to transfer billions of dollars to the Border Patrol.”
Republicans, she said, “refused” to change that aspect of the bill after Democrats “divided the language to fix it.”
“We cannot in good conscience allow billions of dollars to flow into these agencies without serious reforms that would protect our constituents from further violence,” DeLauro said.
Democrats do not want to suspend government activity, but they also do not want to “speed up” this process and ignore the list of anomalies just sent by the White House, she added.
These tweaks to funding levels are typically added to stopgap spending bills, but were not included in House Republicans’ order because they were written before the White House sent a list of requested irregularities to lawmakers on Monday.
“The agencies list over 50 programs that require some action to be protected during the ongoing recovery process,” DeLauro said, using the technical term for the short-term funding bill.
The changes would support firefighting efforts, housing assistance for tens of thousands of people, and programs that support residents of rural communities afford to pay utilities.
“Rushing this bill through the House without carefully considering the various needs that need to be met is not the way to govern,” DeLauro said. “And it is irresponsible.”
The Senate anticipates changes
Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, said earlier in the day that she was working with the committee’s top Democrat, Washington Sen. Patty Murray, on drafting her own resolution.
“It appears that the Democratic side is making a good faith effort to pass the CR resolution and avoid a government shutdown, which always ends in disaster,” Collins said.
Murray said the House-passed stop-gap spending bill has “problems” that need to be resolved to pass the Senate.
“We discovered some anomalies last night and we’re both trying to figure out the best way to put it together,” Murray said.
Status of funds
Lawmakers must rely on the stopgap spending bill because they will once again fail to complete work on more than a dozen annual government funding bills before the deadline.
The Chamber passed three budget bills. The Senate passed none, in part because the committee did not introduce a single bill. The two chambers will have to enter into negotiations at some point to determine the total spending levels for the 12 bills and how to divide the roughly $1.9 trillion among thousands of federal agencies and programs.
That means the full-year government spending bills will become law at the earliest during the lame-duck session, which is expected to last about five weeks between the election and the start of the recent Congress in January.
Lawmakers could also pass a series of stopgap funding bills, rather than completing negotiations on yearlong appropriations bills.
