America's Talking - Govt. funding process advances as three more bills to become law; six remain

Episode Date: January 18, 2026

(The Center Square) – With the U.S. Senate sending a roughly $180 billion funding package to the president’s desk Thursday, Congress has now knocked out half of the annual appropriations bills funding federal agencies in fiscal year 2026. The three-bill minibus, which passed the House last week, grants full-year appropriations for the departments of Commerce; Justice; Energy; Interior; the Environmental Protection Agency, and more. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings and welcome to America's Talking, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. With just a couple of weeks left until the potential for another partial shutdown, the U.S. House has passed five more appropriations bills in the form of too many buses since returning from holiday recess. Joining me to discuss this is congressional reporter Teres Boudreau. Teres, as we begin recording this, there's breaking news to tell our listeners about. Yes, that is true. So the Senate just passed three more bills in the form of a minibus, which have already passed the House.

So they are going to President Donald Trump's desk for signature. And once he signs them, that means that Congress will have knocked out six of the 12 appropriations bills that fund federal agencies, as we're already in fiscal year 2026. So this is a big step forward. It's very late in the making. and they still have six more to do, but this is progress. So the main question is now whether that the Congress will get the remaining six done on time, because on January 30th, that's when the current continuing resolution, that's keeping government funding levels on cruise control, that's when it expires.

And so if that, if lawmakers don't get the funding, all the funding bills done in time, either the government will shut down partially. So those areas of government that have not been covered by appropriations bills for this year, those will be shut down. Or because there's not really an appetite for that at all after last year's record long government shut down, they'll probably pass another CR to buy themselves more time. And that would be the, I believe, the fifth, maybe sixth time that they've punted the deadline to fully fund. the federal government, those agencies that haven't been covered yet by these, you know,

got unfresh funding from these new preparations bills are still running off of funding from two fiscal years ago. So money from fiscal year 2024, they just from running at the same levels. And of course, a lot of Republicans especially don't like that because those are levels from the end of the previous Biden administration. So it's, again, making progress. But It's not exactly going as fast as a lot of people hoped. So what was in the minibus that passed today in the Senate, Terez? Yeah, so there was funding for Department of Justice, Department of Energy, Commerce, Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency.

Those are the main ones. But, you know, there's many agencies and offices under those that got funding as well. And so that adds up to roughly $180 billion all total. And again, that's now heading to the president's desk for his signature. And then the Senate is also, some majority leader John Thune is hoping this week that they can also send to Trump's desk a two-bill minibus that the House also passed this week. And if they do that, then we would be up to eight funding bills that are taken care of. So that would be the ideal scenario. But again, with the Senate especially, it's just that their schedule is so in flux.

It's so dependent on, you know, different lawmakers that have, you know, reservations or different holdouts. And people have to talk about these things and make deals. And so it's hard to predict whether that will actually happen. I think both the House and the Senate, though, Therese, has moved more quickly in the last two weeks than we thought. However, the Senate is out all of next week, correct? And the remaining four, if they do pass this other two-bill minibus, the remaining four are pretty much the trickiest of all of them. Is that correct? Yes, that's absolutely correct.

So, again, one of the reasons why it is very important that the Senate hopefully passes to, two-bill minibus this week, which covers financial affairs and government operations and then some national security offices and agencies, is because next week they're going to be out. The Congress just returned in early January from their holiday recess, but the Senate is now recessing again next week. So it's really imperative that they get that package, that two-bill minibus to the president's desk before they do that. And also, like you said, there were a meaning for. So that includes, I think the thornyest ones are probably Department of Homeland Security funding, the bill that includes that, given the recent controversies with ICE in different cities

and some of the protests and the violence that's happened. A lot of Democrats are really pushing Republicans to include measures such as requiring ICE to wear safety cameras, things like that. And so that's that's a really tricky issue. And then another huge one is the bill that deals with Labor and Health and Human Services, Department of Labor and Health and Human Services, not least of all because there's a lot of funding from the Biden administration for things like a bunch of refugee services, for migrants or things like that. And while the bill in its current form includes less than funding than there was last year. It's still a lot of Republicans think much too high. And so there are other things similar to that, other funding levels and

priorities and projects in the Labor HHS bill that many Republicans are against and want to change. And all that is, again, hundreds of billions of more dollars that are going to be spent. And so those, that's really where I think the focus is right now. We're all eyes are on. If leadership can get people together and make sure that lawmakers just settle on a compromise and just get these bills done before January 30th or whether people are going to continue to make a fuss and, you know, who knows what happens there, whether it's a shutdown or, again, another funding stop gap that covers who knows how many months. I mean, we're already three months into fiscal year 2026.

Lawmakers were supposed to have passed all 12 of these bills by October 1st of last year. That was the beginning of fiscal year, 26. And of course, you know, we had that shutdown because Democrats refused to vote for a continuing resolution. And that lasted 43 days. So, again, they kind of, they just got started on government funding for this fiscal year before they left for holiday break. now they're coming back. They're trying to speed run things. So it's a really tricky issue, and I think it's hard to predict how this is going to play out. But today's news that the Senate has passed and sent to President Trump's desk, three more bills is very good news.

Terrez, thank you for joining us today. Listeners can keep up with the progress on these bills at thecentersquare.com.