Bipartisan funding bills stall as Senate Republicans press forward without Democrats

Senate Republicans are preparing to push ahead on next year’s government funding bill without Democratic buy-in, with the stalemate threatening to fracture the historically bipartisan spending negotiations right from the jump.

An Appropriations Committee meeting to move the first four of 12 bills forward had been canceled twice earlier this month as Republicans and Democrats sought to reach a deal on an overall spending number for fiscal year 2027. It was then scheduled for Thursday — even though no such agreement had been reached.

But that meeting has been postponed until after July 4 because Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is absent, according to a Republican aide.

McConnell’s vote matters because all of the Democrats on the panel are likely to vote “no” on the bills, a change from previous years. They say they need an agreement on a top line, an overall spending number, before moving forward.

“You want to agree to the overall framework before you start filling in the rooms, right?” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), a member of the panel, told The Hill this week. “You want to know what the architecture of the house is before you start planning out each room.”

The four individual bills up for review by the committee are not contested on their own. Considered among the least controversial of the 12 annual bills, they were negotiated over months within each subcommittee in a process that lawmakers said went smoothly as always.

“We started out the year good again,” said Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), the top Republican in charge of funding for the legislative branch. “I came into this year excited to be able to work together again in the committees, subcommittees, we worked together, put together bipartisan bills like we always do.”

But the next step of getting those bills amended and headed for the Senate floor is stalled.

Republicans say Democrats are holding up the process over something that’s not all that unusual.

“We’ve been in that situation before and not had a top line and proceeded, so we’re going to continue to proceed, and I guess they’ll have to decide,” said Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), who leads the agriculture subcommittee.

A Senate Democratic aide, however, said there has been an agreement on a top line in at least the last three years of funding negotiations.

The real problem, Democrats say, is that Republicans are asking for too much money for defense spending and risking cuts to domestic spending like infrastructure and education. The leaders of each subcommittee say the substance of their own bills are fine with the other party, but the stalemate at the top makes Democrats wary of greenlighting the next steps.

“We have a very constructive chair and ranking member, good staff, but until you have an agreement on an overall top line, that makes it very difficult to negotiate a bill,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.).

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the chair, has said the top line suggestions she has received from her Democratic counterpart, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), are not reasonable. Murray has said that Collins has not responded to her most recent offer.

Delaying the markups until after the July 4 break does not necessarily doom government funding. Last year, the committee approved most of the bills later in July with broad bipartisan support, and 11 out of 12 of them received a vote on the Senate floor.

But that funding process still ground to a halt in the fall, causing the longest government shutdown in history. With the midterm elections this year, and members of Congress away from Washington for most of August and October, it’s even less likely that 12 spending bills could get through both chambers with bipartisan buy-in before the end of the fiscal year on September 30.

Republicans are gearing up to forge ahead anyway.

“It’s never going to be like, oh, everybody’s happy and everything’s copacetic,” said Hoeven. “That just doesn’t happen around here. So, you just got to keep pushing forward, you know, fighting your way through it, and getting as much done as you can.”

Doing so will inevitably cause tension with Democrats, who will do what they can to fight for their corner. Republicans and Democrats often agree not to offer amendments in a markup that would be completely unpalatable to the other party, known as “poison pill” amendments. This time, Van Hollen said he’s prepared to offer some amendments aimed at reining in the Trump administration in the case that a topline agreement is not reached.

Republicans could get the bills out of committee without Democrats’ support, but they would be likely to die on the Senate floor where 60 votes are needed to advance legislation, resulting in a government shutdown or a harrowing negotiation to pass a continuing resolution.

And Democrats are holding firm that they won’t back these bills until something changes.

“I think that’s going to be a consensus position,” Van Hollen said.

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