WASHINGTON (States Newsroom) — Members of Congress began searching for compromise on a short-term government funding bill Wednesday, with just a few weeks left to broker a deal before a possible shutdown.
Fresh off their August recess, congressional leaders and members of the Appropriations Committee appealed for bipartisanship from the other side while admitting they are far from a final agreement.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., declined to say during a press conference whether he will negotiate a stopgap spending bill with Democrats, or use the go-at-it-alone approach that succeeded in March.
“Republicans are committed to keeping the government open, and unfortunately, it seems like not all Democrats agree with that, and they’re beginning to apply the government shutdown pressure,” Johnson said. “But I want you to remember one thing: All but one House Democrat voted to shut down the government in March, and we expect, sadly, that that may happen again.”
Johnson said he was open to negotiations with Democratic leaders as long as they “are willing to work with us and think responsibly about how we can spend less than we did last year.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said during an afternoon press conference that Democrats want GOP leaders to negotiate the stopgap spending bill across party lines.
“The bottom line is very simple: We Democrats want a bipartisan bill and we are pushing the Republicans very hard to do it,” Schumer said. “We’re on our front foot. We’re unified.”
Schumer, who took considerable flak for helping Republicans limit debate on a partisan stopgap bill in March, said “it’s much different than last time.”
Pressed by several reporters about what Democrats would help move through the Senate this time around, Schumer said: “We are willing to sit down and negotiate a bipartisan proposal with significant Democratic input. So far, they are not.”
Spending running on autopilot
The House and Senate are supposed to complete work on the dozen annual government funding bills by the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1 but that hasn’t happened for decades, so lawmakers rely on a stopgap spending bill to keep federal departments and agencies running on autopilot for a couple months.
That measure, sometimes called a continuing resolution, is intended to give lawmakers a bit more time to complete bipartisan House-Senate negotiations on the full-year appropriations bills, though Congress used three CRs to fund the government this fiscal year instead of getting its work done.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he expects lawmakers will need to approve a stopgap spending bill “for some time into the foreseeable future,” but that discussions are ongoing about how long it will last and what else might be added.
“My hope would be that whatever that CR looks like, that it is clean and that it enables us to buy some time to get a regular appropriations process done,” Thune said. “I still think the best way to fund the government is through the appropriations process.”
President Donald Trump said from the Oval Office earlier in the day that he expects Republicans will vote for a stopgap spending bill but he didn’t address how it would get through the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster, which requires bipartisanship.
“I think the Republicans will vote for an extension,” Trump said. “We won’t have any Democrat votes.”
Three spending bills seen as possible
House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., told reporters he hopes to negotiate final versions of three full-year bills with the Senate before the end of the month.
Lawmakers would then use a stopgap spending bill to keep the departments and agencies covered in the other nine bills flat funded for a couple of months until the two chambers can reach final agreement on the spending levels and policy within those measures.
“We’re talking about relatively modest bills and bills where there is either broad agreement, like MilCon-VA, or LegBranch and Ag,” Cole said. “We’re not talking about major bills. You can’t really do that until you have a topline and we don’t have a topline.”
The Agriculture-FDA, Legislative Branch and Military Construction-VA spending bills are generally easier to negotiate than some of the other full-year measures, like Defense, Homeland Security and Labor-Health and Human Services-Education.
Cole said when House and Senate leaders begin negotiating a total spending level for all of the bills, or topline, is “above my paygrade.”
“I’m ready to do it at any time if they want to empower us, otherwise the leadership on both sides and the president have to” figure that out, Cole said.
The House and Senate are supposed to start off the annual government funding process in the spring by reaching bipartisan agreement on how much in total spending to spread throughout the dozen appropriations bills.
Those talks haven’t even started for fiscal 2026, which is slated to begin Oct. 1.
Instead, the House and Senate Appropriations committees have separately decided how much to spend and written vastly different versions of the bills.
House and Senate at odds
The 12 bills that have been released by the GOP-led House committee are partisan, while the eight bills released by the Senate panel have received broad bipartisan support in committee.
Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she’s spoken with Cole a couple of times about the three-bills-plus-stopgap strategy and supports the concept.
“I have and I agree with that approach,” Collins said.
Washington state Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, ranking member on the Appropriations Committee, said any stopgap bill “needs to be a real bipartisan compromise.”
“For the last few months we have shown a bipartisan way forward on the Appropriations Committee,” Murray said. “Democrats have shown that we are willing to work in good faith to write bipartisan funding bills that protect investments in education, life-saving research and a lot more.
“We’ve already passed eight out of the committee and three on the floor: MilCon-VA, Ag and LegBranch. As part of a bipartisan short-term CR, I support conferencing those three bills and passing them with the short-term CR for the remaining nine bills.”
House Appropriations ranking member Rosa DeLauro said “the best case scenario for us is to move forward.”
“No gimmicks, no riders, let’s clear the decks,” the Connecticut Democrat said. “Talk about how we get Republican priorities, Democratic priorities.”
Negotiations ‘for weeks now’
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said “there’s a chance” to wrap up negotiations between the two chambers on final versions of some of the full-year government spending bills before the end of the month.
“It might not be all 12, but a few of them for sure,” Scalise said. “So let’s give the appropriators that opportunity to keep negotiating. They’ve already been having negotiations for weeks now — Tom Cole and a lot of his counterparts. I have faith they can hopefully get a lot of things done.”
Scalise, R-La., said he plans to reserve floor time later this month to ensure whatever spending bill gets written is “the top priority.”
Rep. Robert Aderholt, chairman of the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee, said he thinks most people agree there’s going to be some sort of stopgap given all 12 of the annual bills aren’t close to becoming law.
The Alabama Republican said this feat is “almost impossible” given the short number of legislative days left before the shutdown deadline.
“The solution, of course, obviously, or the only alternative, would be to have a CR, but I think the shorter the CR, the better,” he said, noting that the measure would have to be “long enough that you can have negotiations, but short enough that it doesn’t drag out until Christmas and that … we’re up here at Christmas doing an omnibus or something like that, which everybody wants to avoid.”
Congress has often bundled the final, conferenced versions of the dozen bills together into a sweeping omnibus package at the end of the year to ensure quick floor votes, though GOP leaders have tried to get away from that practice in recent years.
Rep. Chuck Edwards, a North Carolina Republican who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, said that while he hopes a stopgap spending bill is “not necessary,” the panel is “certainly prepared to put together a short-term CR if that’s what’s required to avoid a shutdown.”
In his complaint, Wainberg also claimed Piedmont officials engaged in secret, closed-door conversations with the Board during his hearing, leaving him outside without the chance to respond. The loss of his job, income, and health insurance, his attorneys argued, created financial hardship and put his health at risk while dealing with a serious illness.