As Republicans and Democrats fail (again and again) to pass a short-term spending bill to fund the federal government into November, lawmakers are starting to worry about a longer-term problem.
Will they be able to pass full-year appropriations bills?
“The odds of being able to pass something during the shutdown,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole told NOTUS, “it’s really tough.”
In the background of the shutdown, top appropriators are working to advance spending bills that would fund the government for the remainder of fiscal year — through September 2026. But multiple lawmakers from both parties told NOTUS that the FY2026 appropriations process has been hamstrung by the shutdown and will likely require another continuing resolution that keeps the lights on into at least December.
Given that the current mood of Congress is somewhere between dismal and foul, appropriators are concerned that any bipartisan effort toward a full-year funding plan — even after the shutdown ends — would be a Herculean task.
“I worry about our ability to actually get full-year spending bills across the line if Republican leadership won’t even sit down for a serious conversation at this early stage in the process,” Sen. Patty Murray, the top Senate Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, told Punchbowl News last week.
The House-passed CR was supposed to give appropriators more time to get the full-year spending bills through both chambers — at least until Nov. 21. But given that Senate Democrats have voted that bill down seven times and Speaker Mike Johnson is keeping the House in recess, very little in the way of substantial progress can be made.
“Obviously a shutdown chills things,” Cole said. “But I’m ready to work with my Democratic friends on this, and we’ll find some middle ground if they give us an opportunity to do that. But again, I don’t get to make that call.”
Still, appropriators have gotten the ball rolling on three individual spending bills. The House and the Senate both passed versions of the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, Agriculture and Legislative Branch bills. Due to interchamber discrepancies between the bills, appropriators are currently conferencing the measures to resolve those differences.
But ultimately, the package of the three bills, known as a mini-bus, cannot reach the House or Senate floor without approval from Republican leadership — which Cole said he had not yet secured as of last week.
That hasn’t stopped the package from becoming a negotiating chip. Johnson said Monday that he informed Murray that he would put a conferenced mini-bus on the House floor whenever the shutdown ends.
“I told her, it is my full intention that if we break this impasse and we put these bills together — we have three of them in conference committee right now — whatever the conference committee comes up with, I will put on the floor,” Johnson said during a press conference. “I’m ready to go.”
That offer has not motivated Murray — or any Senate Democrat — to back the GOP-led continuing resolution. Senate Republicans still need six more Democratic senators to support their legislation to reopen the government.
Despite the standoff, Cole explained to reporters, he would like to advance the conferenced mini-bus as soon as possible and then move on to passing the other nine appropriations bills, which could move through both chambers in waves.
“It’s kind of like rescuing people from a burning ship,” Cole said. “If you can get a few off, just get a few off, and then we can go to another package.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, an appropriator, made a similar pitch.
“I’m hoping we’ll get these three bills conferenced, that passed the House and the Senate passed, to a conference and to the president’s desk, and keep churning out bills,” he told NOTUS. “It’s much better to appropriate than, I think, it is to continue.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune was even more precise, telling Axios Wednesday that he’s open to bringing standalone appropriations to the Senate floor one by one during the shutdown, acknowledging that would require unanimous consent. Thune specifically floated bringing the Defense appropriations bill to the floor.
That strategy is easier said than done.
Senate appropriations bills do not currently match the House’s. The House version of the Defense bill, which passed in July, allocates $831.5 billion in discretionary spending. The Senate’s version — which GOP leadership has not yet brought to the floor — is $20.4 billion more expensive.
The House and Senate’s Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education bills are currently $12 billion apart, which would require intense, potentially lengthy negotiations to reconcile.
Plus, Cole said, advancing more appropriations bills would require an agreement from leadership on the overall funding levels, known as a topline agreement, which has not been reached.
“What we would hope to get is some guidance on the very top line,” he said. “But that takes the administration and both leaderships and both chambers to agree to.”
But the very concept of such a bicameral, bipartisan agreement sounds far-fetched to many lawmakers.
Murray told reporters Wednesday that in order for any appropriations bills to proceed, she needs assurances that the Trump administration will not claw back the congressionally approved funds through the rescissions process like they did earlier this year.
“I think Republicans need to come to the table and talk to us about that, and Speaker Johnson needs to tell his appropriators to get the bills done with assurances that this president is not going to undo them,” she said.
Republicans have resisted incorporating such language into appropriations bills. Democrats are insisting on including assurances in any short-term bill to end a government shutdown, in addition to funding to extend Affordable Care Act tax subsidies, and the GOP has not budged.
The bottom line: Lawmakers know that resolving the shutdown will be hard, but the prospect of fully funding the federal government is seeming even harder. After all, the GOP-led continuing resolution — the most widely-supported funding bill currently on the table — would only fund the government for 42 more days.
Multiple appropriators told NOTUS that the time crunch likely means that Congress would have to approve yet another continuing resolution to finish the FY2026 appropriations process — at least a partial one.
“I do think there’s a willingness on both sides to get some of these things passed,” Sen. John Boozman told NOTUS.
When asked whether Congress will need to pass a continuing resolution beyond November to do that, Boozman nodded emphatically.
But continuing resolutions aren’t popular in either chamber. Even if Congress can pass one to end the shutdown now, there is no guarantee that they can do the same later.
“I just don’t think we can keep governing by CR,” Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito told NOTUS.