Senate passes stopgap funding bill to avert government shutdown

The Senate approved a stopgap funding bill 90-6 late Friday, sending it to the House with a Dec. 11 expiration that pushes the next shutdown fight into December. The measure, passed as a continuing resolution, keeps federal agencies financed for now and gives lawmakers a short-term escape from a shutdown that had loomed at the end of September.

The vote marked an unusually broad bipartisan result after senators had already advanced the bill on an 89-4 cloture vote earlier in the week. Senators on the Appropriations Committee agreed to the funding deal on Aug. 2, then cleared it for floor action as leaders tried to finish the work before the chamber left Washington for a five-week recess.

That recess matters because the bill does not settle the larger spending dispute. It only postpones it. By funding the government until Dec. 11, Congress has delayed the harder decisions about full-year appropriations, spending caps and policy riders until after the fall campaign season is over, when the next round of bargaining will unfold under the pressure of a new deadline. The timing also leaves both parties with another chance to use shutdown leverage in the final stretch of the year, when year-end legislation tends to be crowded and politically charged.

The Senate version also diverged from the House Republican stopgap that had been unveiled in July. House GOP leaders had proposed financing federal agencies through Dec. 4, a shorter extension that showed both chambers converging on temporary fixes rather than a full budget agreement. The Senate package included necessary adjustments tied to the special-master provision referenced in the bill, underscoring how even a short-term patch can become a vehicle for unresolved policy disputes.

Lawmakers also set aside other fights before adjourning. The Senate tabled a bipartisan amendment on hemp-derived THC products, delaying a federal ban by one month, and confirmed Todd Blanche as attorney general before the recess. The sequence reinforced a familiar pattern in Washington: when deadlines tighten and the votes for a full spending deal are not there, Congress turns to temporary extensions to buy time and push the next confrontation into the future.