The Senate on Monday advanced a House-passed, three-bill spending package. Lawmakers are readying action on another two appropriations bills as they race to meet a Jan. 30 deadline for funding the government.
The 80-13 Senate procedural vote on the three-bill spending package more than exceeded the 60 votes needed to clear a filibuster. Crossing that hurdle puts the measure on track for final passage later this week.
“We should not waste any time in getting this bipartisan package over the finish line,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, South Dakota Republican.
The package totals roughly $180 billion for the departments of Commerce, Energy, Interior and Justice, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency.
Once that package is enacted, Congress will have passed full fiscal 2026 funding for half of the 12 annual appropriations bills.
Three bills funding the legislative branch and departments of Agriculture and Veterans Affairs were enacted in November as part of the spending deal to reopen the government after a record 43-day shutdown.
The shutdown-ending measure included stopgap funding for the other annual bills that will expire Jan. 30.
While the Senate works to finish the second spending package, the House is preparing to vote this week on a third.
That $77 billion package will only contain two spending bills, one that funds the State Department and foreign aid programs, and another that funds the Treasury Department and financial services agencies. The latter is also referred to as the “general government” spending bill because it includes spending that doesn’t fit neatly under an executive department, like funding for the White House and the District of Columbia.
Republicans touted that the $50 billion spending bill for the State Department and foreign aid programs represents a $9 billion cut from the previous fiscal year, while Democrats noted that it is still $19 billion more than President Trump requested in his budget.
The new two-bill spending package was supposed to contain three bills, but lawmakers left out the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill.
Democrats are demanding new language to constrain DHS’ immigration enforcement activities after an ICE agent shot and killed a woman in a car in Minneapolis last week.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, New York Democrat, said the incident showed ICE’s “depraved indifference toward human life.”
“There are some common sense measures that need to be put in place so that ICE can conduct itself in a manner that is at least consistent with every other law enforcement agency in the United States of America,” he said.
Mr. Jeffries said Democrats would like to include those restrictions in the DHS spending bill, but it’s complicated. Much of the funding ICE is using for its enforcement activities is mandatory spending Republicans provided in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, not the annual discretionary spending that is currently up for review.
That leaves the DHS spending bill among the four that lawmakers are still negotiating just weeks before the Jan. 30 deadline. The other three bills are some of the largest and include funding for the departments of Defense, Education, Health and Human Services, Housing, Labor, Transportation and Urban Development.
