America's Talking - Senate Passes Minibus Before Recessing, Making Slight Progress on Govt Funding

Episode Date: August 9, 2025

(The Center Square) – Right before leaving for its week-long August recess, the U.S. Senate passed a minibus Friday evening containing three out of the 12 annual government funding bills. The package allocates more than $153 billion for military construction and Veterans Affairs in fiscal year 2026 alone, $27 billion for agriculture and rural development, and $2.2 billion for the Legislative branch. More than 80 senators ultimately voted for the minibus. Appropriations bills are typically passed individually. The unorthodox move is the result of Republican leaders spending days negotiating with uncooperative Democrats, who stalled on confirming the rest of President Donald Trump’s civilian nominees and by doing so prevented progress on the funding appropriations process.Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxxFull story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_e61bb11f-68a4-4705-9ee0-61665af9eea5.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to America's Talking, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAelib, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. After keeping government funding essentially on cruise control for the past 11 months, Congress is facing the threat of a government shutdown on October 1st if it does not pass the 12 annual appropriations bill that fund federal agencies. Joining me to discuss this is the Center Square's congressional reporter, Therese Boudreau. Torres, Congress is in its August recess, but when House representatives and senators return. They have a lot of work to do yet again. Where are we at in the process? And how do lawmakers plan to meet such a tight deadline? Yeah, so right now,

we're not very far along in the process. As you said, both chambers of Congress are in recess right now. And they have only, the Senate has only passed three of the 12 appropriations bills in a minibus package and the House has only passed two. And one of the bills that the House has passed is for the same agencies that the Senate is passed for. So they're going to have to work out the kinks of that. We'll probably see that happen a lot. But again, when they get back, they only have a couple of weeks until the government shut, until at least a partial government shutdown on October 1st. And the problem is that lawmakers don't really want to work together right now, especially Democrats are still very angered over the passage of the one big, beautiful bill, the giant legislation that it did a lot of things, but it permanently extended the Trump tax cuts. It reforms, Medicaid programs. It did a lot of things that Democrats were unhappy about. And then there was also a rescissions package, which it drew back some,

government like nine billion in a government funding for different foreign aid programs. So that was also something that all Democrats opposed. So they're really not in the mood right now to be talking with Republicans about what is normally a very bipartisan process. Because obviously everyone wants to keep the government agencies running. Nobody wants a government shutdown. That would be very, very unpopular. And some have called it even political suicide. If one of the sides says, we're going to.

force the government shutdown. But again, there's not really a lot of room for talk right now. So the Senate, the Senate's three-bill minibus, that was bipartisan. But everything the House has been doing so far when it's been passing out of committees and trying to get to the floor and getting to the floor in some cases has been much less so. And again, if the Senate and the House both pass one of the same 12 bills, they have to make sure they're the same thing. So basically what we're looking at is we only have by the time that that Congress gets back, we'll only have, I think it's less than three weeks, or to pass, to pass all of those, the 12 appropriations bills. That is a very, very tight deadline, even if Congress was working together and everything was bipartisan and hunky dory. So what's most likely going to happen is there's probably going to be another continuing resolution. which essentially would keep government funding on cruise control. They can make a little changes, but that's essentially what it does.

And that would be the fourth time in a row that Congress has done that rather than pass all 12 appropriations bills. This past 11 months coming up on 12 months, fiscal year 2025, there were no appropriations bills that passed. We've just been running off of three continuous CRs containing resolutions. So that might happen again if lawmakers can't get their act together. These continuing resolutions, essentially what they do is they extend previous budget bills or appropriations bills that have passed. Just continue that funding. As you said, they could make some minor changes there. But it's not a new appropriations bill. Is that right? Yes, that's correct. And so different needs that might arise in different agencies, like if the FDA says, oh, we need more.

more money to combat bird flu or something like that. And we need it in this specific way that only the appropriations process can give us, then the CRs actually become very unhelpful. They're not enough, right? There are different needs that the agencies have that sometimes can't be met because they're just stuck with whatever Congress did appropriate to them in the 12 bills in fiscal year 2024 at this point. So it's, it's definitely tricky.

there have been talks between Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer But President Donald Trump has also inserted himself In the process a lot And I think it seems like kind of Blown up some things

Sometimes So it's it's we're on really rocky footing Right now There's It's possible You know that that all 12 pass But it is highly unlikely and Thune has already essentially been talking about, yeah, we might have to do a CR again.

So it would be a fourth CR. But since Senate passed a minibus, that goes to the House now. It's pretty bipartisan. Hopefully it passes the House. If it passes the House, then that means that the minibus, you know, the three bills that were in it were the ones that fund the legislative branch. the military construction and veterans affairs. And then, oh, it's slipping my mind. There's a, there's only three of them.

But those at least would not, you wouldn't need the CR to cover those agencies. So you'd have at least some agencies, essentially, that have updated funding. So, yeah, that's where we're at right now. It's not ideal. You know, the one big, beautiful, bill was a huge factor and the reason why it took them so long to craft these these 12 bills.

I just took up a lot of time, even though they passed the last CR in March. So they've had months and months. But again, it's been kind of a whirlwind Congress. So, you know, make sense that they'd be a bit behind schedule, but we'll just have to see. Well, thank you for joining us today, Terrez. Listeners can keep up with this ongoing budget battle at thecentersquare.com. Thank you.