The Senate passed its first package of fiscal 2026 spending bills Friday, making up for lost time in the long-delayed appropriations process before preparing to head out of town for a monthlong August recess.
The package contains the Senate’s Military Construction-VA, Agriculture and Legislative Branch bills, comprising about $188 billion of the more than $1.6 trillion in discretionary spending likely to be approved for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.
“We are on the verge of an accomplishment that we have not done since 2018, and that is pass appropriations bills across the Senate floor prior to the August recess,” Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, said before the final votes. “That is exercising our constitutional responsibility for the power of the purse.”
Appropriations ranking Democrat Patty Murray of Washington echoed that view.
“I believe Congress should decide how to spend taxpayer dollars,” Murray said. “This is how we do it.”
But with nine other annual spending bills left untouched until at least September, and only two bills passed by the House so far, Congress will need to pass a stopgap funding measure next month to avoid a partial government shutdown.
Major differences have already appeared between the chambers’ levels. Their Defense spending bills are over $20 billion apart, with the Senate going well above the House and the president’s request.
And the Senate Labor-HHS-Education and Transportation-HUD measures appear to be nearly $23 billion higher collectively than allocations for their respective House counterparts, which are already well above the Trump administration’s budget request.
Intensive negotiations
And the partial progress made Friday, on a 87-9 vote, came only after days of intensive negotiations.
The Legislative Branch bill, a typically noncontroversial measure funding Congress and related agencies, had to be approved separately as an amendment to the package to appease Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., who considers it too costly.
The Senate voted 81-15 to adopt that amendment after advancing the two other bills, adding the Legislative Branch measure to the combo package.
Senate leaders also had to abandon plans to include a fourth bill: the $79.7 billion Commerce-Justice-Science measure. That bill had to be dropped from the package after Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., objected to its inclusion late Thursday night over a disputed location for a new FBI headquarters.
While a site had been selected in Greenbelt, Md., President Donald Trump intervened to push for moving the headquarters to the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in downtown Washington.
Van Hollen sought to put Trump’s plan on ice by winning inclusion of a provision in a manager’s amendment that would insist the headquarters meet security requirements that the downtown site couldn’t offer. Republicans were willing to give Van Hollen a vote on his amendment, but not as part of the en bloc package that would virtually guarantee its adoption.
Rescissions
Passage of the package came after votes on miscellaneous amendments, including one by Senate Budget ranking Democrat Jeff Merkley of Oregon, who sought to prohibit Trump from attempts to cancel previously appropriated funding.
Democrats were outraged last month when Republicans approved a White House request to claw back $9 billion in foreign aid and public broadcasting funds, warning that such rescissions threaten to blow up the bipartisan appropriations process.
But a motion on Merkley’s measure was rejected on a 44-51 vote, falling well short of the 60-votes needed to waive a budget point of order raised by Senate Budget Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
Veterans, guns and money
Another contentious amendment, offered by Sen. Christopher S. Murphy, D-Conn., a staunch gun control advocate, would direct the Veterans Affairs secretary to publish a quarterly report on the number of veterans who have been reported to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System and, of those veterans, how many died by suicide using a firearm in the previous quarter.
“All this amendment seeks to do is to collect information to see what the rate of suicide has been amongst that population of veterans, many of them deeply mentally ill, who now are able to purchase a gun,” Murphy said.
Military Construction-VA Subcommittee Chairman John Boozman defended the current system, in which people can only lose their gun rights if they are found by a competent judicial authority to be a danger to themselves or others.
“Needing help with your finances doesn’t make you mentally incapacitated or mentally incompetent,” Boozman, R-Ark., said.
Murphy’s amendment was rejected, 44-51.
USDA relocation
Van Hollen proposed an amendment to the funding package on the heels of a recent USDA announcement that it would reorganize many of its agencies and relocate more than half its Washington, D.C., workforce to five states.
The amendment, rejected, 42-53, would bar the use of appropriated funds to carry out Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’ July 24 memo detailing the reorganization plan or any similar plan. It also would direct Rollins to submit benefit-cost analysis and public comment reports to Congress.
Earmarks
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., a deficit hawk, offered an amendment designed to crack down on the publicity won by lawmakers who secure earmarks for local projects in appropriations bills.
His amendment called for rescinding any earmark in the package if its sponsor takes credit for the spending in press releases, ads or otherwise outside of official legislative debates in committee or on the floor. It was defeated on a 21-75 vote.
Package details
The $27.1 billion Agriculture spending measure is largely uncontroversial and was approved by the Appropriations Committee by a 27-0 vote in July.
The measure would boost funding from fiscal 2025 levels by about 1 percent, with the largest increase going to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children. WIC would receive $8.2 billion, or an increase of $603 million.
The bill was temporarily held up from reaching the floor over a provision that would strip the industrial hemp industry of the ability to sell intoxicating, marijuana-like, hemp. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., successfully lobbied top appropriators to remove the provision in the manager’s package that was adopted.
The Legislative Branch bill would provide $7.1 billion in discretionary spending for House and Senate offices and other agencies serving the Capitol complex. The measure represents a 5 percent increase over comparable funding for this fiscal year, with increases for senatorial offices, the Capitol Police and the Architect of the Capitol.
The bill would fund the Government Accountability Office at $812 million, in line with current levels, avoiding sharp cuts proposed by House appropriators. The Congressional Budget Office would get a slight $1.4 million increase, to $71.4 million.
It also would block a pay raise for senators, while extending to Senate employees and officers protections for nursing mothers that require employers to provide reasonable break time and private space for employees.
Kennedy was the lone vote against the bill during the Senate Appropriations markup.
The biggest of the three bills was the Military Construction-VA measure. The bill would provide $153.5 billion in discretionary spending for the Department of Veterans Affairs and military construction projects within the Defense Department — slightly more than the $152.1 billion House version.
The Senate figure includes $133.3 billion in discretionary appropriations for the VA, a $4.3 billion or 3 percent increase over current levels. The measure would provide a separate $52.7 billion in mandatory funding for a separate fund for veterans exposed to toxins while serving overseas.
Military construction and family housing would be funded at $19.8 billion, a $2.3 billion or 13 percent increase. Within that total is nearly $1.1 billion for senators’ earmarks, such over $100 million secured for Kentucky projects by the retiring former GOP leader, Mitch McConnell.
The measure also includes $300 million in Agriculture bill earmarks, including over $25 million Collins secured either on her own or jointly with Angus King, I-Maine.
Collins, considered the most vulnerable Senate GOP incumbent in the midterms, also celebrated funding in the bill that isn’t technically “congressionally directed spending” but nonetheless contain clear benefits for Maine.
That includes funding that will benefit University of Maine research and support the state’s potato industry, and nearly $450 million for administration-requested upgrades at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.
John M. Donnelly contributed to this report.
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