House Passes $1.2 Trillion Spending Bills, Capping Hectic Season

Congress is on the cusp of funding all government agencies by the end of the month after the House passed its last spending bills totaling more than $1.2 trillion.

The House passed the Defense, Labor-HHS-Education, and Transportation-HUD full-year funding bills (H.R. 7148; BGOV Bill Analysis) by a widely bipartisan vote of 341-88, along with the Homeland Security measure (H.R. 7147; BGOV Bill Analysis), which passed by a more partisan vote of 220-207.

The last bills will be tied together with House-passed Financial Services and National Security-State funding bills (H.R. 7006; BGOV Bill Analysis) and sent to the Senate, which is expected to take up the six-bill package when it returns to Washington next week. Congress faces a Jan. 30 deadline to fund most government agencies.

The package comprises the last full-year funding bills for fiscal 2026. Its passage represents a significant victory for appropriators who have felt their power slip under the second Trump administration, which has unilaterally shifted federal funding around, sidestepping Congress.

House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) lauded the bills’ “guardrails” against the Trump administration, telling reporters Wednesday “they are not going to eviscerate, continue to do that, or destroy the appropriations process.”

The sudden turnabout in bipartisan negotiations after a dysfunctional budget process in recent years has brought a new sense of optimism to appropriators as they turn to fiscal 2027 bills, but some lawmakers have already acknowledged the coming challenges of legislating with the November midterm elections later this year.

“People are going to be back home, trying to win and trying to get back, so I don’t know how that plays out,” Rep. Mark Alford (R-Mo.), an appropriator, said Wednesday. “My hope is that we can walk and chew gum at the same time.”

The package does not extend a provision from the continuing resolution enacted last November that blocks agencies from executing a “reduction in force” plan — effectively layoffs — through Jan. 30.

The funding bills include several protections against the Trump administration’s attempts to gut agencies and cancel federal grants, but DeLauro said she expects the White House to still attempt to do so. The funding bills will strengthen Democrats’ arguments when the matter inevitably ends up in court , she said.

“Can I guarantee that they will abide by that? Hell no,” DeLauro said. “But we did it and we will continue at it.”

House lawmakers included language in the package to repeal a provision from the enacted Legislative Branch funding law that allows senators to sue the federal government for $500,000 per instance if their phone records were seized without their knowledge. The also settled a dispute over ethanol biofuel that popped up ahead of the vote by establishing an E15 council to recommend legislation to support the industry.

With the House set to be in recess next week, lawmakers are effectively jamming the Senate to repeal the provision even as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who has vowed to sue for millions of dollars, has become one of the provisions fiercest defenders.

Lawmakers rejected two amendments to the package from conservative hardliners, one from Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) to block enforcement of a rule requiring new vehicles to have “kill switches” and the other from Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) to effectively eliminate all earmarks from the Labor-HHS-Education bill.