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The Senate on Monday advanced a bipartisan bill to fund the government at current levels through Dec. 11 with strong support from both parties, a break from the bitter fights that dominated recent funding cycles.
Democrats have opposed similar efforts in recent years, either to avoid ceding power to Republicans and President Trump or in a bid to advance their own priorities in must-pass funding bills. The battles led to back-to-back record-breaking government shutdowns.
But nearly all Democrats voted for this stopgap bill, called a continuing resolution (CR) — and did so several months in advance of the usual last-minute scramble before the Sept. 30 funding deadline.
Those voting no were Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who caucuses with Democrats, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who typically opposes CRs, also voted no.
Senate leaders said they hope to send the measure to the House before leaving for a month-long recess at the end of the week, and the strong bipartisan support on Monday pointed to a desire from lawmakers in both parties to avoid another funding lapse just weeks before a crucial election.
Democratic leaders also said their caucus generally backed the bill, the result of a deal between the top appropriators in both parties, because it contains efforts to block some Trump administration moves.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, told reporters Monday night that she wanted to buy time to finish the full-year government funding bills without pressure from the approaching midterms.
“I believe that we all want to make sure that we have good funding through December 11, and hopefully, you know, we’ll be able to negotiate good bills once the elections are over,” Murray said.
In her press release announcing the deal on the stopgap over the weekend, Murray praised a provision that will block a Trump administration attempt to reshape how federal grants are awarded by requiring approval and allowing at-will cancellation from the Office of Management and Budget, both dependent on a certain grantee aligning with the administration’s political agenda.
“Enabling this rule would only give Trump the greenlight to take even more federal funding hostage,” Murray said in the statement. “While Republicans rejected killing the proposed rule outright, I’m going to keep fighting to put a stop to it once and for all, and I will keep pressing my Republican colleagues to do exactly that.”
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), pushed back on that idea, telling reporters he’d spoken Monday morning to OMB Director Russell Vought, who had assured him that the rule would not be in effect until after Dec. 11 anyway, meaning the provision in the funding bill would have no practical consequence.
“I think [Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer got a lot out of the CR,” Kennedy said. “I don’t think he got as much as he thinks he did. I think he’s going to go back to his base and say I got the OMB rule. Well, he didn’t.”
Kennedy said he would not have supported the CR if it had contained a permanent ban on the OMB grant approval rule. Vought, with support from most Republicans in Congress, has been on a crusade to end federal grants he sees as wasteful spending since taking office last year.
Murray pushed back on those details, saying the new rule “was going to go into effect on October 3.”
It’s still grounds for a future fight, both indicated, because Murray said Democrats are going to “fight like hell” to make the temporary block permanent.
The provision was also a win for Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine), who fought against the rule, calling it “deeply flawed,” and has pushed back on other efforts to pare back Congress’s power of the purse.
Collins, who is in a tough race this fall and has built a brand on being an independent voice in the upper chamber, told reporters that the Senate forced OMB to submit to the temporary ban on implementing the new rule.
“I would not say that they’re ecstatic about that provision being in there, but many of us felt very strongly about it, so it’s in there,” Collins said, when asked if OMB had signed off on the temporary ban.
Democrats also perceive the CR as containing smaller rebukes of Trump that they want to champion — including what’s not in it. The White House had asked for some defense spending that the stopgap does not contain, like $1 billion for building “Trump-class” battleships. And, according to Murray, the CR prevents the administration from redirecting appropriated funds to immigration enforcement.
Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), who opposed a shutdown-avoiding CR in March 2025, told The Hill that she voted for this one because she wanted to allow time for full-year spending negotiations to continue, and because the ban on the OMB rule would prevent the Trump administration from blocking federal grants to Democratic-voting states.
“It was really important that we also got in this agreement that OMB cannot penalize states that didn’t vote for Donald Trump, as far as letting grant money, other kind of funding, go,” Rosen said. “They have to stop doing that.”
Despite the overwhelming support for the CR, the proposed OMB rule is far from the only stage for a potentially grinding funding fight later this year.
Murray and Collins have yet to come to a deal on a top line for spending for fiscal year 2027. Murray is pushing for renewed funding for infrastructure projects to balance out the GOP push for increased defense spending, while Collins has said Democrats’ proposals for doing so thus far have not been reasonable.
Murray said that will be the hardest part of getting regular bills across the finish line, even with the added time.
“We need to have a defense, non-defense top line that is one that is rational, that we can work with,” Murray said when asked what the obstacle will be to government funding.
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