What Shut Down? House Appropriators Pat Themselves on the Back For Getting Most of Their Work Done

The Department of Homeland Security may have recently entered a shutdown but congressional appropriators are celebrating anyway.

After years of passing short-term bills to keep the government open, House lawmakers cheered the fact that they were able to pass 11 of the 12 appropriations bills, an increasingly difficult feat.

“We’re at the point where you got all 12 of them out of committee,” said Rep. Mark Amodei, who chairs the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees DHS. “You got all 12 of them off the floor in the House.”

“We’re looking at another shutdown,” Amodei continued. But, he added, “this time, really, it’s not much to do with appropriations.”

Amodei recently announced he was retiring at the end of his term, saying it’s time to “pass the torch,” for both his seat and his seniority on the committee. The congressman, who has served on the Appropriations Committee for more than a decade, told NOTUS that he believed it was a good time to step down because he wanted to “go out while you’re on top” — even as the agency under his purview is shut down.

Senators fumed last week after they failed to reach a bipartisan agreement to keep DHS funded ahead of a week-long recess. But for lawmakers in the House, it was a return to regular order for the committee, which has been plagued by partisan polarization, a failure to pass full appropriation bills and has had to fend off attempts by the executive branch to circumvent Congress’ spending powers.

Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro repeatedly reiterated to NOTUS that even as the Trump administration “has tried to destroy the Appropriations Committee,” they “did pass 11 bills.”

Rep. Dan Newhouse, another retiring Republican appropriator, told NOTUS that “there’s been some frustration over the last few years” from members over how “things that we decide or resolve in appropriations get set aside … on the leadership level.”

“The good thing is we’re going back to what it used to be,” Newhouse added.

Some lawmakers, however, weren’t as optimistic because the bills weren’t passed individually.

“I know we talked about regular order,” said Rep. Steny Hoyer, a senior House Democratic appropriator who is retiring at the end of this term. “I know we passed 11 of the bills, and that’s good, but we didn’t pass them in regular order way.”

“The appropriations committee is not working,” he added.

By Hoyer’s definition, congressional appropriations have not operated under regular order in decades. Between 1977 and 2025, lawmakers passed 207 continuing resolutions. The last time Congress passed all individual appropriations bills on time was in 1997. Since then, when regular appropriations bills have passed, they’ve done so as part of funding packages — which is how the 11 bills were enacted this time around.

Lawmakers are currently at a stalemate on how to move forward with DHS funding. Democrats are demanding reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, after agents killed two U.S. citizens in Minnesota. But Republicans haven’t budged on their demands.

“It’s a highly polarized and partisanized Congress,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole said. “It’s a challenging time, but the reality is, we got 95% of it done.”

One senior House Democratic appropriator who requested anonymity to speak candidly said the committee has made it more difficult to get work done due to its current membership. The lawmaker told NOTUS that “traditionally, both sides of the aisle avoided putting members from the polar extremes of their caucus” in order to facilitate negotiations.

“Republicans broke that tradition,” the lawmaker said.

In 2023, as part of a deal to give Kevin McCarthy the speakership after several rounds of unsuccessful votes, several House Freedom Caucus members were effectively promoted on the Appropriations Committee: Rep. Andy Harris became a subcommittee chair and Reps. Andrew Clyde and Michael Cloud were added as new members.

These Freedom Caucus members were instrumental in 2025 in getting Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, one of the 12 so-called “cardinals,” to remove a provision from an appropriations bill that would have stopped the Trump administration from withholding funds that have already been allocated by Congress, as NOTUS first reported.

“You can see as we go through appropriations what they do,” the Democratic lawmaker continued. “They put pressure on the appropriations leaders to insert language into appropriations bills that we maybe previously wouldn’t have included because it undermines our process.”

Some Republicans had concerns that passing the 11 bills was not necessarily a guarantee of future success.

One senior Republican House appropriator, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, said there is hope that the ability to negotiate and pass the bills in a bipartisan manner “creates a muscle memory, but I don’t think we should read into that it means that it’s all going to be roses.”

The lawmaker said appropriators are starting discussions around funding bills for the 2027 fiscal year and that it is a “whole new ballgame.”

Enacting the 11 bills was “an important moment to restore and remember the U.S. Constitution,” the lawmaker continued.

“But again, just because we made that happen, just because everyone is happy that we did it, that does not mean that our issues — of the past and also new ones — aren’t going to come up again,” the senior Republican added. “But hey, that’s why we get paid the big bucks.”