Congress is one step closer to avoiding a government shutdown after the House passed two funding bills on Wednesday, but Democrats’ issues with the Department of Homeland Security funding bill and time constraints in the Senate still put Washington in danger of seeing a lapse in funding.
The House voted 341 to 79 to pass a “minibus” that includes a Financial Services-General Services bill and a national security and State Department bill. The vote was bipartisan, with 57 Democrats voting in favor of the package and 22 Republicans voting against. It now heads to the Senate, where lawmakers face a short time frame to pass the remaining appropriations bills before the Jan. 30 funding deadline.
Leadership appeased conservatives by allowing them to bring two amendments, one offered by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) and one offered by Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ), but both failed.
Roy’s, which called for cutting appeals court funding for the District of Columbia by 20% and eliminating the budgets of Judges James Boasberg and Deborah Boardman, failed 163 to 257, with one member voting present.
Crane’s, which would strip funding from the independent nonprofit organization National Endowment for Democracy, failed 127 to 291.
Including Wednesday’s vote, the House has now passed eight appropriations bills.
Three appropriations bills were passed by Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump as part of a deal to end last year’s record-breaking government shutdown, which lasted 43 days.
A separate three-bill minibus, which the House passed last week, is up for consideration in the Senate. The chamber has to take up the minibus — which includes bills for Commerce, Justice, and Science; Energy and Water; and Interior and Environment — on Thursday, as several senators are heading out on congressional delegation trips and the chamber is on recess all of next week. The chamber held a widely bipartisan procedural vote earlier this week, 80 to 13, easily breaking the filibuster and allowing the package to move forward.
The Senate will likely take up the financial services and national security minibus the week of Jan. 26.
House faces uphill battle to pass contentious funding bills
House appropriators now have four remaining bills to get over the finish line: DHS, Defense, Labor-Health and Human Services, and Transportation-Housing Urban and Development. Passing the bills without a short-term spending deal will fully fund fiscal 2026, which hasn’t happened in years, and avoid another government shutdown.
But that will be a complicated task for appropriators on both sides of the aisle.
The bill to fund DHS was originally supposed to be in the financial services and national security minibus, but Democrats asked for that bill to be removed after the party’s uproar over the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer-involved shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-OK) said this week he was “sensitive to the political challenges” Democrats are facing on the DHS bill, as several members of the party have called for tighter restrictions or even withholding funding from ICE. Democrats have largely been opposed to the actions of DHS as officers and agents carry out immigration and deportation orders from the Trump administration.
Cole said on Wednesday he didn’t have any updates regarding the DHS bill.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) said on Tuesday that Democrats are “in the throes of conversations” right now on how to respond to the Minneapolis shooting and rank-and-file members’ requests in the DHS bill, which is “why we separated it out.”
She said she’s not looking for an increase in funding for ICE, but they are eyeing policy riders “to get a bill that reins in the terrorizing of our communities.”
Cole and House GOP leadership have said they would like to put DHS in the final minibus next week. But DeLauro threw cold water on that on Tuesday.
“No, that’s not going to happen … it’s got to be by itself. It’s gonna be separate,” DeLauro said.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) provided few details on Wednesday as to how Democrats will restrict ICE through appropriations, though he said there are “a variety of different things” that remain on the table to “get ICE under control so that they are actually conducting themselves like every other law enforcement agency.”
When asked about the status of the DHS bill, Jeffries said, “You’re going to have to ask House Republicans what they plan to do relative to funding in this particular area.”
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins (R-ME) told PBS News that she hopes for text on Defense, Labor-HHS, and THUD to come out on Sunday.
HOUSE GOP OVERCOMES ATTENDANCE AND REBELLION PROBLEMS TO ADVANCE SECOND BATCH OF FUNDING BILLS
“This is the most progress that has been made on appropriations in years. So I am delighted,” Collins said.
If DHS’s funding is voted on as a separate bill, it may not have the full support of the Republican conference, and it likely won’t get any Democratic support if there is a lack of strong guardrails for ICE. In that case, Cole said earlier this week he wouldn’t rule out a full-year continuing resolution to fund the department for 2026.