FY2026 Appropriations Bills

Last Thursday, Senate leadership brought the House-passed defense appropriations bill (H.R. 4016) to the floor for an initial procedural vote, called a cloture vote.  That motion failed to win the required 60 votes that would have allowed the chamber to move to consideration of the underlying measure.  All but three Democrats voted “no.”

Had that vote been successful, Senate leadership said that they would have substituted the bipartisan version of the defense appropriations bill reported out of the Senate Appropriations Committee (S. 2572) for the House-passed version and then packaged that bill with a few other appropriations bills before bringing the resulting “minibus” to the floor for a vote.  If that appropriations minibus passed, the Senate and House would have moved on to negotiating a compromise version that could pass both chambers and be enacted into law.

Democrats have been calling for this type of regular order movement of appropriations bills, but they refused to support Republicans’ plan pending firmer agreements on which measures will be packaged together and assurances that the administration will not retroactively rescind congressionally appropriated funds.