The longest government shutdown in U.S history is over, but appropriators still have a long way to go to get nine of the 12 necessary funding bills over the finish line by Jan. 31, 2026.
The government reopened after 43 days, following the House’s passage, mostly along party lines, with six Democrats voting in favor and two Republicans voting against, of a legislative package that extended funding until the end of January and included three appropriations bills.
However, with the new January deadline, appropriators are up against the clock, as both chambers must now agree on the nine remaining bills so they can be sent to President Donald Trump’s desk before funding runs out once again.
Beginning Thursday, there are 57 weekdays until Jan. 31, but the House is only set to be in session for another 17 days, with the Senate in session for 20 days for the remainder of 2025. The House, in particular, is backlogged after being out of session for 54 days, already eyeing a stock trading bill and legislation to release the Jeffrey Epstein files.
As of now, the House has passed all 12 appropriations bills out of committee and passed the defense and energy bills on the floor, with defense gaining bipartisan support. The Senate, meanwhile, has passed eight of the 12 bills out of committee, but only the three in the minibus have made it to the floor.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-OK) said the three-bill minibus and the January funding patch would “buy us time” to see how much “damage was done” during the shutdown.
“There’s a lot of bipartisan things in them, but we need to sit down and go forward with the others,” Cole told reporters outside the Rules Committee hearing room on Tuesday night. “I still think that the biggest problem here all along has been Democratic leadership’s decision to link this to Medicaid, which there’s no way the Republicans are going to undo what they did in the big, beautiful bill.”
He had remained bullish that the appropriations process could move fast once the government reopened, telling the Washington Examiner last month he thought the remaining nine bills could be wrapped up by the end of December.
“Our numbers are a lot closer together than most people seem to realize,” Cole said Tuesday. “We know that those numbers, when we put them there, we’re going to have to bargain up, because the Senate is going to spend more.”
Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID), chairman of the interior subcommittee, told the Washington Examiner that he remains “optimistic” the appropriators can get back on track now that the government has reopened.
“I’m confident that under Speaker Johnson alongside House Leadership, and Chairman Cole, we will continue to restore regular order and pass the remaining appropriations bills,” Simpson said in a statement.
However, having a December CR was unlikely to garner any support from fiscal hawks such as those in the Freedom Caucus, whose considerable numbers could easily sink any bill, thanks to Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) razor-thin majority. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins (R-ME) also would not hear of a December CR, instead favoring something that went into the new year.
Disagreements among the “four corners,” or the appropriations chairmen and ranking members in the House and Senate, that popped up during the shutdown fight signal more choppy waters ahead.
Only three of the four corners approved the minibus, after Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, refused to sign off on it.
“It is unfortunate Senate Republicans prematurely released partial text of the minibus without getting agreement from all corners,” DeLauro said. “While the military construction bill is better than the full-year CR, those programs were funded under for 2025. It is important to place it in the context of the entire legislative package that will be considered.”
DeLauro pointed to getting the rug pulled out from under her to reporters on Wednesday. She also claimed that the 54 days during which the House was out on recess could have been used for appropriators to work on bills.
“So my concern is that we’re going to be here in the same situation on Jan. 30,” the ranking member said. “Because we’ve come to that, there really is a lack of trust. How do you believe people?”
The minibus only accounted for about 10% of the roughly $1.8 trillion it takes for Congress to fund various federal agencies. Under the Jan. 31 CR, all programs except those for veterans, food aid, farmer assistance, and legislative branch operations will remain funded at the Biden-era spending levels set by Congress in March 2024.
The remaining nine bills are expected to be even more complicated to pass, including the labor and health and human services appropriations bill, which is one of the most contentious and expensive.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) acknowledged that there were more choppy waters ahead earlier this month after Trump signed the deal to end the shutdown.
“We’ve got to just find a resolution to get the lights back on,” Scalise said. “But the real negotiation is going to be: Can we get an agreement on how to properly fund the government with individual appropriations bills, packages of appropriations bills?”
The Senate is already eyeing a loophole to try to tie funding for the Pentagon and other agencies to House legislation sanctioning the International Criminal Court, as previously reported by the Washington Examiner.
By doing this, leadership could overcome a Senate rule that lets any one senator object to bundling two or more spending bills into a package known as a minibus. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) plans to put the Pentagon bill, as well as three other bills funding the departments of Labor, Transportation, Justice, and Health and Human Services, as soon as next Tuesday.
The strategy signals some lawmakers see the writing on the wall: that their troubles are far from over.
“We’ll move as fast as we can so we’re not waiting until the Jan. 30 deadline,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), an adviser to Thune, told reporters Monday evening. “But you guys have been here long enough — we’ll probably be having this conversation Jan. 28.”
Others are bullish that if they can move on to another minibus, they can avoid another shutdown come winter.
“If we do that, we’ll have 87% of the government funded … so you really take away the risk of the shutdown, because you’ve got the work done,” Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND) said.
Other hiccups, such as the Trump administration’s recessions requests and a last-minute Senate FBI provision tucked into the spending deal, are a cause for concern for Democratic appropriators that they will not be able to achieve a bipartisan negotiation.
“President Trump and Russ Vought’s illegal stealing of funds from American communities has made it difficult to reach any appropriations agreement,” DeLauro said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “Those challenges are compounded by Senate Republicans’ decision to secretly insert language into the Legislative Branch bill that would aid January 6th insurrectionists.”
“Democrats are ready to negotiate spending bills on a bipartisan basis that lower costs for families and protect Congress’s constitutional power of the purse,” she added.
Johnson said he was “proud” of Congress being able to pass three appropriations bills through the minibus, but he was “really sad that it took us so long to get here.”
TRUMP RAGES AT DEMOCRATS AND THE FILIBUSTER IN SIGNING BILL TO END GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN
“There was so much pain that had to be endured to get to this point,” Johnson told reporters during a victory lap after the House passed the spending deal to end the shutdown.
“So now that we’ve got the lights back on, we’ve got the government reopened … the Republicans will get right back to work that we promised the American people that we would do.”
David Sivak, Lauren Green, and Hailey Bullis contributed to this report.