(The Center Square) – Right before leaving for its week-long August recess, the U.S. Senate passed a minibus Friday evening containing three out of the 12 annual government funding bills.
The package allocates nearly $900 billion for military construction and Veterans Affairs, $27 billion for agriculture and rural development, and $2.2 billion for the Legislative branch. More than 80 senators ultimately voted for the minibus.
Appropriations bills are typically passed individually. The unorthodox move is the result of Republican leaders spending days negotiating with uncooperative Democrats, who stalled on confirming the rest of President Donald Trump’s civilian nominees and by doing so prevented progress on the funding appropriations process.
Although Republicans originally planned to craft and pass all 12 government funding bills soon after the One Big Beautiful Bill Act became law, the immediate introduction of a controversial $9 billion rescissions bill caused weeks of delay.
After the rescissions bill passed on partisan lines, many Democrats swore off working bipartisanly to fund the government, objecting to the apparent pointlessness of reaching compromises with Republicans on funding priorities if the majority could simply rescind content they didn’t like later.
Most Democrats ultimately folded Friday night however, in large part due to the bipartisan crafting of the three bills in the minibus. Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., even ended the voting marathon on a conciliatory note.
“We have now passed three appropriations bills helping our farmers, helping our veterans, helping our security. It shows that when both sides want to work together, we can get things done,” Schumer said. “We hope we can make this same kind of progress on further appropriations bills that we’ve made on these.”
Congress has until Sept. 30 – the end of fiscal year 2025 – to pass all 12 annual appropriations bills that provide funding for federal agencies to spend on programs. If lawmakers do not pass all 12 in some form through both chambers of Congress, they risk a government shutdown.
So far, only two of those bills have passed the House, while the three-bill minibus is the only 2026 appropriations legislation that has passed the Senate.
“When I ran for leader, I promised to return to a regular order appropriations process,” Senate Majority Leader Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said on X following the vote. “While we have more work ahead of us, today we made significant progress toward that goal.”
Congress never passed a fiscal year 2025 budget, instead passing three consecutive CRs to keep government funding essentially on cruise control until Sept. 30.