Overview
House Action. The House Appropriations Committee continued its break-neck pace this week, marking up its tenth and eleventh appropriations bills: the Labor–HHS–Education and Homeland Security (DHS) measures. The sole remaining measure is the Defense bill, totaling roughly $1 trillion. The bill was reported out of subcommittee yesterday and is expected to be considered by the full committee during the last week of June.
If the current schedule holds, Chairman Tom Cole (R-OK) will meet his ambitious goal of reporting all 12 appropriations bills out of committee before the July 4 recess, a pace not seen in years. House leadership is also planning to bring the National Security-Department of State and Energy-Water bills to the floor before the recess.
Senate Action. Meanwhile, progress in the Senate Appropriations Committee has stalled. The panel has now postponed its planned markups for the second consecutive week, reflecting a deep impasse between Chair Susan Collins (R-ME) and Vice Chair Patty Murray (D-WA) over topline levels.
The two leaders have traded offers, but each side accuses the other of failing to engage meaningfully. Chair Collins maintains that she has presented multiple topline proposals without receiving “realistic counters,” while Vice Chair Murray argues that the offers she has seen are too heavily weighted toward defense spending at the expense of domestic priorities. Democrats insist that advancing bills without a topline agreement would be premature, while Republicans argue that doing so is necessary to keep the process on track and avoid a shutdown.
The Senate’s stalemate also reflects the broader partisan climate and steadily increasing election-year pressures that have made even routine legislative work difficult. Lawmakers from both parties acknowledge that political polarization is at a high point, and with narrow majorities in both chambers, even small disagreements can derail progress.
Reconciliation Developments. Amid their appropriations work, the House this week approved a second reconciliation bill, providing supplemental funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to support immigration enforcement operations. President Trump signed the measure into law on Wednesday.
There has been limited discussion of pursuing a third reconciliation package to address broader policy priorities, but Senate Republicans — including Appropriations Chair Collins — have expressed skepticism. They argue that another reconciliation measure, particularly one aimed at additional defense funding requested by the Senate Armed Services Committee, is unlikely to advance.
Some appropriators warn that the increasing reliance on the reconciliation process risks eroding the traditional, bipartisan appropriations process that has historically governed federal spending. The sentiment is shared across party lines: lawmakers fear that using reconciliation for regular appropriations could further entrench partisan divisions and weaken committee authority.
Outlook. With the House maintaining momentum and the Senate still working through significant challenges, the two chambers remain on divergent tracks heading into the July 4 recess. The ongoing debate over defense versus domestic spending, combined with the pressures of an election year and increasingly strained institutional norms, suggests that reaching a comprehensive funding agreement will be difficult.
Congress is expected to pass a short-term continuing resolution in September to keep the government funded through November. However, achieving a full-year appropriations deal before the end of the calendar year is far less certain.
Our team believes strongly that the longer Congress relies on non-traditional funding mechanisms and stopgap measures such as continuing resolutions, the greater the consequences for both governance and the public. Prolonged dependence on these short-term fixes reduces transparency, limits bipartisan input, and ultimately weakens Congress.
