A bipartisan committee, but politics in practice

Law enforcement, both local and federal, investigate alleged violations of the law. The HCE investigates violations of House Rules. Some things are violations of both laws and House Rules so a representative might get investigated both by law enforcement and HCE. For example, Rep. Cuellar was indicted by federal prosecutors in 2024 for allegedly accepting bribes. The HCE also opened an investigation. Last year he was pardoned by President Trump. So is he free of all concerns now? Probably, but not necessarily. While the legal case is over, the HCE can still investigate the allegations of bribery and censure, and even recommend to expel him, because bribery is also against House Rules.

How did this dual structure come to be?

Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution says

Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.

Only expulsion has any detail to it and that’s that it requires a 2/3rd majority. Otherwise, the House has a range of punishments that have evolved over time to include censure - where not only does a majority vote to agree to a resolution of censure, but the censured member has to come down into the well of the House Floor while the resolution is read - but also reprimand/disapproval in which a majority of the House votes to agree to a resolution of reprimand/disapproval (but the member isn’t called down front to be shamed) and then a range of lesser public indications of “this was bad behavior”.

Until a standing committee to handle ethical or criminal allegations was created in the 1960s, reviews of and votes on censures or reprimands were handled by the whole House. With the establishment of the House Committee on Ethics (HCE), concerns were moved to the small group to investigate and then recommend action to the House as a whole. The HCE has an equal number of members from both the majority and minority parties in the House with the chair coming from the majority party. Most actions require a majority vote, or in other words, require members from both parties to vote in favor of them. In theory, this keeps the HCE from being purely a vehicle for political punishment. Again, in theory.

In 2008, the Office of Congressional Conduct (OCC, originally the Office of Congressional Ethics) was established as an independent and non-partisan office, staffed by career civil servants rather than elected politicians, to handle allegations of misconduct and then make recommendations to the HCE on how or whether to proceed.

Why was the OCC created? Because of the pervasive belief that investigations of legislators were based solely on political goals despite its attempt to avoid this problem in its design. In theory then, an allegation would come to the OCC, they’d investigate to see if there was anything to it and, if so, recommend that HCE use their work to decide how to proceed.

There’s just one problem: all ethics investigations are political because Congress is an inherently political body.

There’s never a case when choosing to investigate a specific legislator’s actions, where the member is in either the majority or minority, won’t have political ramifications. So, when a legislator under investigation complains that they’re being attacked for politics, they’re not wrong, but it’s also not necessarily exculpatory because they may have indeed also broken laws or violated House rules.

Take the recent example of former Rep. George Santos. As soon as he won his election, stories began to appear in the press indicating that he had lied outrageously about a wide range of things in order to get elected. It soon became clear there was evidence that he had also committed a number of criminal campaign finance violations. As a result, there was a lot of pressure within the House to expel him. But, at that time, the Republicans held a very narrow majority in Congress. So as much as he could creditably be said to bring disrepute on the House just by being there and there were vocal objections to his presence from members of his own party, there was a political problem for the Republicans because they needed every vote they could get. Do they let the criminal process play out and keep him as a voting member? Or do they acknowledge his many violations of House rules in addition to criminal codes and take the high road? After nearly a year in Congress, the House chose to expel Santos. He was subsequently tried, convicted, served a few months in prison and then released when President Trump commuted his sentence. This was an unusually obvious case of unethical behavior and even so, political considerations were never not part of the equation.

Censures for speech

Over the course of the last few years though, there’s been a new trend in censures that is all politics. Legislators are not accused of violating anything other than the rule that requires them to bring credit to the House. However, the definition of discrediting the House has been filtered through partisan lenses.

The first instance of this new use of censure came in 2023. Former Rep. Schiff (now a California Senator) was censured by the House of Representatives 213-209 on June 21, 2023 for various statements and misstatements he made between 2017-2019 related to President Trump and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign — all likely protected from criminal prosecution by the First Amendment, but not protected from a House censure. The censure resolution itself contained misstatements including denying that the 2016 Trump Campaign attempted to coordinate with Russia, which was well documented by the Mueller Report. There was no campaign finance issue, no sexual harassment, no financial crime or other corruption alleged. He was censured because the Republican majority was angry about things he had said.

Perhaps the real first instance of this was when the House voted to remove (now-former) Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene from her committees in 2021. It wasn’t a censure, but it was an effort to punish her for being a conspiracy theorist whose antics were, say it with me, bringing discredit to the House. 11 Republicans voted with all Democrats on that vote which was an unusual outcome.

Since then these censures over speech have passed the House:

• In Nov. 2023, Rep. Tlaib was censured 234-188 for, according to the censure resolution, promoting false narratives regarding the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and for calling for the destruction of the state of Israel. Tlaib and a number of Democratic colleagues denied that anything she said amounted to the allegations.

• At the President’s Joint Address to Congress on March 4 2025, Rep. Green repeatedly objected to various statements by President Trump. He was removed from the chamber and on March 6, he was censured 224-198.

Meanwhile, in the last few months there have been attempts to censure Rep. McIver for having been charged with impeding law enforcement in a complicated situation at an ICE facility in New Jersey and Del. Plaskett for texting with Jeffrey Epstein during a Congressional hearing. In both cases, just enough Republicans voted with Democrats to table the censure resolutions that they failed.

Did McIver and Plaskett deserve the censures? For the most part, your answer will depend on which party you identify with - that’s certainly the case with House membership. Did McIver’s scuffle with ICE agents bring disrepute on the House? Not if you think that she was right in her efforts to defend Newark’s mayor Ras Baraka from what the Department of Justice later admitted was a wrongful arrest. Does Plaskett texting with Epstein bring disrepute on the House? Apparently not in the minds of most Democratic members.

Campaign finance violations, misusing his office and sexual assault and stalking: The cases of Rep. Cory Mills

Also in both cases, Democrats used the threat of a censure over allegations against Republican Rep. Cory Mills to successfully kill the resolutions against Democrats McIver and Plaskett. Was the threat against Mills what pushed those Republicans to vote to table? They didn’t say so, but it might have been.

Something that is frustrating for regular observers of Congress is that the allegations against Mills are much more serious than any brought against either McIver or Plaskett. He is variously accused of multiple campaign finance violations, misusing his office and sexual assault and stalking. Yet, these allegations were treated purely as political tools. He should have already been under investigation by the Ethics Committee for all of them (he had been investigation for a small fraction for about a year already). Instead, Democrats appeared to only take the allegations as seriously as they needed to protect their own members.

Ironically, as the last vote in a 3 censure/censure-like vote week, a censure resolution against Mills, brought by fellow Republican Rep. Nancy Mace, was diverted into a recommendation that HCE investigate Mills on all the listed allegations. They say they have begun that process.

Serve or resign

Except for George Santos, and Greene who resigned for unrelated reasons, everyone mentioned so far in this post is still serving either in the House or in the Senate. Most still have their committee memberships and have faced no further consequences.

The truth is, no matter what a legislator says about Congress, they generally want to be there and will work to stay in Congress. Likely the one true punishment for a legislator is being either expelled or voted out in the next election. If you look through our Misconduct Database, you can find lots of examples where legislators were being investigated and, while there was no specific action taken by the Ethics Committee or law enforcement against them, they also chose not to run again or lost in primaries. Recent examples include: Rep. Michael McCaul, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, Rep. Madison Cawthorn, Rep. Kaialiʻi Kahele and Rep. Carolyn Maloney. There were doubtless other factors that contributed to each of these legislators’ retirements/losses including redistricting, but it’s also possible (and certain in Cawthorn’s case) that the party ceased to provide support as did the public.

To recap, when a legislator’s behavior warrants punishment, the House has a number of mechanisms by which to do so. Traditionally, these efforts are reserved for violations of House Rules other than just bringing discredit to the House or for their speech. But, as Congress continues to be intensely partisan and very, very narrowly divided, that is changing and censures as purely political tools seem to be gaining ground.

Misconduct should have consequences

There is a nascent effort by a bipartisan set of representatives to change the House Rules so that a censure requires a 60% vote rather than the current simple majority. This effort misses the point. No one else can punish House members for violations of House Rules besides the House itself. The problem isn’t the number of censures; it’s that the censures aren’t necessarily about actual misconduct. Making it easier for House members to violate House Rules looks like a step backwards. The rules aren’t the problem. The problem is that there’s so much political value to pursuing censures even when there’s no specific misconduct alleged.

As it is, HCE investigations can drag on for years. Rep. Mills, as we already noted, has been under investigation for a year already. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick’s HCE investigation began in 2023 and is not yet concluded. Same for Rep. Troy Nehls. Meanwhile investigations of Rep. Henry Cuellar and Rep. Andy Ogles began in 2024 and remain unresolved.

The House would be much better served by beefing up HCE and OCC and by pressuring legislators to cooperate with investigations rather than stonewalling them, and not making it harder to discipline members.

Since last fall we’ve

• bombed small boats and their civilian Venezuelan crews that we have claimed were smuggling drugs to the U.S.

• Brought a fleet of military vessels to the region

• Dropped bombs near Caracas, the capital of Venezuela

• Seized President Maduro and his wife and indicted him in federal court over drug trafficking

• Announced a plan to seize some Venezuelan crude oil indefinitely and spend it at the President’s discretion.

Whether any of this was legal is a difficult and a somewhat philosophical question.

What is the War Powers Resolution?

The War Powers Resolution, a 1973 law,, “requires that the President communicate to Congress the committal of troops within 48 hours. Further, the statute requires the President to remove all troops after 60 days if Congress has not granted an extension,” per the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University. Since military action appears to be over, although the President has threatened further action around the world, the War Powers Resolution may have been satisfied.

What are Authorizations for Use of Military Force (AUMFs)?

The Constitution gives the power to declare war to Congress, not the President, but all recent presidents have engaged in military actions without declaring war. In most cases, it came with an authorization from Congress instead.

Per Congress.gov, AUMFs are laws which “permit the President to use United States military forces in pursuit of set objectives and within defined parameters.” Without an AUMF, the President must rely on inherent Constitutional powers of the presidency, which may or may not apply. For example, after the September 11, 2001 attacks, Congress passed an AUMF that was used as the legal basis for military force in a wide range of places around the world because the authorization was for military force against terrorists. That authorization, along with one from 1991, were both repealed in the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act. President Trump signed that law last year about a week before he attacked Venezuela and captured the Venezuelan president.

Whether removing a head of state is tantamount to declaring war, and thus not permitted without Congress’s approval, is not likely to be resolved.

Are we bound by international law?

Well, we agreed to be bound by international law when we joined the United Nations, of which we are still a member. In general, UN members are prohibited from unilaterally using force against other nations, with very few exceptions. This is the point of having an entity like the UN - to help manage disputes in order to avoid or at least decrease violent conflict around the world.

On the other hand, who’s going to stop us if we ignore international law?

Can the President control the proceeds from selling Venezuelan oil?

The Constitution is very direct in giving Congress ultimate control over government spending: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” Trump’s social media post that the “money will be controlled by me” makes a big assumption that Congress writes him a blank check in law first. Currently, many members of Congress are going on the record saying that they want oversight over any US revenues from Venezuelan oil sales, side-stepping the Constitutional issue of how the revenue is spent.

What Might Congress Do?

This week the Senate will vote on a War Powers bill to stop President Trump’s actions in Venezuela. It’s not expected to pass, and certainly not with enough votes to override the President’s veto. Democrats might also withhold votes on upcoming government funding bills, triggering another government shutdown at the end of the month, unless military funding is restricted or to extract other policy concessions around Venezuela and the sale of its oil.

Or Congress could pass legislation affirming the administration’s actions, instead.

What is Congress Likely to Do?

Nothing. It’s the safest choice politically. If you come out too strongly for or against and then public attitudes about the Administration’s actions go heavily one way or the other, it’ll cost votes. So the best thing to do politically is often nothing.

1,976 pages of new law

At 1,976 pages of new law enacted since President Trump took office, including an increase of the national debt limit by $4 trillion, any journalist telling you not much happened in Congress this year is sleeping on the job.

Using rules that exempt certain bills from the filibuster, Congress passed (and President Trump signed into law) the 330-page “reconciliation” bill which included tax breaks adding $500 billion to the deficit; new limits on Medicaid, SNAP, federal student loads, and green energy; and $171 billion for immigration enforcement, making ICE the largest law enforcement agency in the United States. Also exempt from the filibuster was the “rescissions” bill which slashed most funding for foreign aid (saving about $800 million and potentially causing 1 million deaths world-wide and a geopolitical vacuum that China is ready to fill) and public broadcasting (saving about $100 million).

Those were perhaps the most controversial bills ever enacted, with senators voting yes on the reconciliation bill representing just 44% of the country’s population. I don’t think that’s ever happened before and really captures the political climate. (For comparison, the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, passed the Senate with the yea votes representing 62% of the country’s population.)

Earlier this month, Congress passed the 1,259-page National Defense Authorization Act, a yearly bill that sets military and related policies. This year, the NDAA incorporated 40 other bills on a range of topics, including police first aid kits and reuniting Korean American families with family members in North Korea. It also included a provision intended to force the Secretary of Defense to provide more information on the military strikes on Venezuelan civilian boats.

Using a rarely-used rule to override the Speaker of the House, legislators passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act to force the Trump Administration to release Epstein files. It’s incredibly significant any time the Speaker loses control over the floor since setting the floor schedule is the Speaker’s most important job.

Congress also quashed numerous Biden Administration regulations.

And the Senate confirmed 341 Trump nominees, which is a fairly fast pace.

196 bills enacted

196 bills were enacted. The mainstream media will tell you it’s only 61 because they don’t look at what’s inside omnibus bills. Fewer bills are getting a vote and presidential signature, but they are getting longer and longer and often bundle a number of other bills. (That’s a trend that started decades ago.)

The 1,976 pages Trump signed into law is on the low side: More than Reagan (1,528) and GW Bush (1,024) did by this point in their terms, less than the first Bush (2,518), Clinton (2,705), Obama (3,478), Trump in his first term (2,236), and Biden (2,450).

But more isn’t better, and not every page of legislation enacted is actually important.

The reverse is also true. The just two pages cutting foreign aid has enormous domestic and geopolitical consequences.

What Congress hasn’t done

It’s also true that there are things that Congress hasn’t done. The first was not enacting funding for government agencies, perhaps Congress’s most important job, which resulted in the October government shutdown.

Then was not being in session. House Republicans took their chamber out of session for some 40 days vowing to not negotiate with Democrats to end the government shutdown, only to come back into session to approve a bill negotiated with Democrats in the Senate. They could have used that time to figure out agency funding levels for the remainder of the fiscal year after January. Instead, another government shutdown may be around the corner. (Congress is supposed to have figured this out before the fiscal year began on October 1.)

Nor has Congress done much for government efficiency, allowing Trump to fabricate cuts and fire Inspectors General, the abuse watchdogs at federal agencies. Republicans also hope to downsize Congress’s abuse investigators at the Government Accountability Office. These cuts would cost taxpayers billions of dollars by allowing waste, fraud, and abuse to go unchecked. Or more likely, abuse would be checked just when it advances the President’s interests.

Congress has also been silent on Trump’s tariffs, despite the power to tariff being reserved to Congress. Congress could also address the Trump Administration’s illegal deployment of National Guard troops in Illinois, as the Supreme Court recently ruled, or the swirling conflicts of interest in the Trump family.

H.R. 5371: Continuing Appropriations, Agriculture, Legislative Branch, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Extensions Act, 2026 is the bill that ended the shutdown. It includes funding for the remainder of the fiscal year for the food assistance program SNAP, the Department of Agriculture, the FDA, the military, Veterans Affairs, and Congress itself (that is, through Sept. 30, 2026), and a continuation of Trump-level funding for the rest of the federal government just through January. It also contains a handful of extraneous provisions discussed below.

It cleared the Senate in a vote Monday night with 8 Democrats defecting. Then it passed the House on Wednesday 222-209, with six Democrats voting for it and two Republicans against. The President signed the bill later that evening and by Thursday, furloughed workers were returning to work and backpay was supposed to start disbursing without delay. Midday Thursday, the Department of Justice withdrew its case against SNAP payments so those payments that were held up should also be disbursed in the next few days.

What Democrats Got

The first of three notable extraneous provisions reverses firings of federal workers that occurred during the shutdown and prohibits any further mass firings of federal workers until the end of this continuing resolution which is January 30, 2026. (Whether that actually stops the Trump Administration from doing more mass firings remains to be seen.)

Democrats did get one other thing out of the shutdown: Delay. By grinding Congress nearly to a halt in what is usually one of the most productive months for legislating, Democrats prevented the Republicans’ agenda from moving forward. Although the Senate kept working during the shutdown as we mentioned last update, floor time was occupied by numerous failed votes to end the shutdown. And no Republican legislation moved forward in the House for 54 days, though that was on account of House Republicans’ choice to leave town.

A Payout for Some Republican Senators

The next extraneous item — and one that caused one of the two House Republicans to vote no — is a part of a new section on surveillance by the Executive Branch of the Senate. Though the provisions are written generically, it seems to give several senators a payout over the seizure of their phone records during DOJ investigations into the events around January 6, 2021. This section provides for $500,000 to each Senator for each “instance” of record collection that doesn’t meet new but retroactive requirements. Potentially this could be quite the payday for the senators involved, possibly in violation of Senate ethics rules. As of Friday, November 14, some of the Senators who would benefit say they won’t pursue the money. Sen. Graham (R-SC) on the other hand says he’s going to go for as much as he can get. The House says it will hold a vote soon to repeal that provision, but that likely won’t go anywhere without the senators who put the provision there in the first place.

Food Safety Rules Weakened

According to The Lever, “Amid a lobbying blitz and a flood of campaign cash, senators inserted language into this week’s emergency spending bill that eliminates rules designed to prevent food contamination and foodborne illnesses at farms and restaurants, according to legislative text reviewed by The Lever. The bill would also limit the development of rules to regulate ultra-processed foods, despite such foods being derided by the ‘Make America Healthy Again Movement,’ championed by President Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.”

SNAP Fully Funded Through Next September

Because the FY 2026 U.S. Department of Agriculture’s appropriations bill was included in the final version of the continuing resolution, SNAP (food assistance for low income Americans) will now be fully funded through the end of the fiscal year which is September 30, 2026. Even if there’s another shutdown, there will not (or should not anyway) be a gap in disbursements to folks who can’t afford food.

And there’s a lot more in the bill than we can research, unfortunately.

We’re Not Doing This Again Next Year, Are We?

Probably not, but who knows. The current continuing resolution lasts until January 30, 2026. Only three of the 12 appropriations bills have now been completed. Will the other nine get finished by January 30? Maybe, maybe not. More likely is another continuing resolution to get to the end of the fiscal year, September 30, 2026, or another shutdown.

About half of federal government employees are still working, including federal police like ICE, TSA, and air traffic controllers, the military, and staff deemed essential throughout the government. But those workers won’t get paid until the shutdown ends, and it’s legally dubious that many should be working at all. Payments out of a contingency fund for SNAP, the food assistance program, are only covering part of SNAP’s benefits and recent payments may be clawed back (the Supreme Court also ruled on it). That’s all because the Constitution requires that federal dollars are only spent when a law is enacted to authorize it, and the last laws authorizing all this spending expired on September 30.

To end the shutdown, Republicans must find at least 8 Democrats in the Senate to agree on an “appropriations” bill for either short-term funding (called a “continuing resolution”) or year-long funding.

Republicans proposed to continue Trump-level funding until November 21, which would include the major increase in spending on immigration enforcement, major cuts to foreign aid, student loans, and food and medical benefits for the poor, and workforce reductions throughout much of the federal government that Republicans enacted during the year. The time until November 21 was to be used to negotiate full-year appropriations bills (which should have already been enacted before the fiscal year ended, ideally).

Democrats have said that they would agree to that with 1) an extension to expiring health insurance subsidies for middle-class families and 2) a guarantee that Republicans won’t break the deal in the middle of the fiscal year (again). More on all that below.

Senate Republicans offered to hold a vote on extending the subsidies, but they didn’t offer to vote for it. Democrats didn’t accept the symbolic offer, but negotiations in the Senate continue. House Republicans in any case said they would not negotiate until the shutdown ended. (Democrats didn’t ask for funding for illegal immigrants, contrary to lies from the other side.)

Republicans expected Democrats to concede rather than be blamed in the public eye for the shutdown. Neither happened.

The shutdown doesn’t prevent Congress from being in session, and since the shutdown began the Senate has been working: The Senate passed a bipartisan full-year defense spending bill, passed bills to end Trump tariffs and reverse Biden-era regulations, confirmed a handful of Trump nominations for federal judges, agency leaders, and military positions, and voted several times on (failed) proposals to end the shutdown. And Senate leaders from both parties have been negotiating an end to the shutdown.

The House of Representatives, on the other hand, has had the lights off. Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson sent House Republicans home a week before the shutdown began until Democrats accede to the Republican proposal. Rather than actually being in recess, every few days a token representative gavels the chamber in and then a few minutes later gavels it out as if there is nothing to do. Most representatives are not in D.C., nor holding town halls in their districts, or apparently doing any work at all.

With the chamber technically in session, the Constitution would like a word: Johnson has refused to seat a representative elected in September. It’s unprecedented, and it’s to avoid a vote on an issue that would embarrass the President: Seating Rep.-elect Grijalva could trigger a vote on releasing DOJ’s Epstein files. (This is the second time the Speaker has kept the House out of session to avoid the Epstein issue.)

We’re here because of the filibuster rule in the Senate.

The Senate’s 3/5ths threshold to end debate is why 52 Republicans now need 8 Democrats in the Senate, or 60 senators, to advance legislation to end the shutdown. Republicans are down one vote of their own because Sen. Rand Paul has been voting against the Republican plan for its increase of the deficit. (Numerically, President Trump could align with Democrats and 13 Republicans instead, which is actually how government shutdowns were avoided in his first term, or legislators could come together without Trump, but none of that is likely.)

In March, Trump did find 10 Democrats to join Republicans to pass a continuing resolution (CR). But funding levels have dramatically changed since that last CR: Republicans used special rules that give a simple-majority vote for their signature bills earlier this year: The One Big Beautiful Bill which made most of the changes to federal spending mentioned above and the bill that defunded foreign aid (USAID) and public broadcasting (CPB) followed special simple-majority procedures. With a simple majority, they could pass those bills without Democratic support. Those rules don’t apply to the shutdown.

Or they could change the filibuster rule. Trump has told Republicans to do so, just as he did in 2017 to confirm his Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. So far, Senate Republicans have not taken that route this time. Changing the filibuster would open the door to more extreme legislation not only now but also if Democrats take back the Senate.

Republicans have indicated they might use those simple-majority rules again next year to undo whatever deal is reached to end the shutdown (similar to how those rules were used to undo the CR that Trump himself signed into law a few months prior). That gives Democrats little incentive to negotiate and is why they want a guarantee that Republicans will stick with the deal for the whole fiscal year.

Soon House Republicans are going to reach the end of their bluff because no proposal is on the table for funding beyond November 21. They will have to come back to the Capitol to vote on a proposal for what’s next, which might be extending the stalemate, offering a concession to win Democrats’ votes, or the Democrats folding. And it looks like we may be repeating this all over again in Februrary rather than having funding for the whole fiscal year.

For now though, we’re where we’ve been since October 1: Democrats demanding a revised continuing resolution that extends health care subsidies and House Republicans refusing to entertain any negotiation until after Democrats approve the continuing resolution as it is.

(Two more thoughts: Half of the federal budget isn’t on a yearly cycle and so is mostly unaffected, like social security and Medicaid. Federal workers are supposed to get back-pay per a bill President Trump signed into law after the last shutdown, but Trump has floated the idea of ignoring that law. You might think furloughed workers don’t deserve to be paid, but they aren’t permitted to get another job while still a federal employee.)

This was entirely predictable.

President Trump made sweeping changes to the federal government’s revenues and spending this year: A major increase in spending on immigration enforcement. A near total cut to foreign aid. Major cuts to student loans and food and medical benefits for the poor. Workforce reductions throughout much of the federal government. New across-the-board taxes on imports. Extensions of tax cuts primarily benefiting the wealthy. And, according to Republicans, a growing national debt.

Any one of these would have been a major change. All of them is major, major change, as Trump might say, the likes of which we’ve never seen before. (Not to mention countless other major policy changes that aren’t related to government funding.)

Of those policies that were passed by Congress, most Democrats and even some Republicans voted against it. Republicans passed them with slim majorities using special “reconciliation” and “rescission” rules that allow a simple majority vote in the Senate to cut spending.

But yearly appropriations bills require 3/5ths of the Senate, a supermajority, to agree because of the rules around filibusters.

Republicans knew they didn’t have the votes to pass yearly appropriations other than by making it a must-pass bill: Sign-off on policies Democrats just voted against or the government shuts down. You could call it holding the government hostage. House Republicans left town a week ago rather than be present to negotiate. (That part is not a uniquely Republican tactic.)

And since Republicans might use reconciliation and rescission rules again next year to cut anything Democrats agree to now, there was little incentive for Democrats to negotiate.

Republicans are trying to spin this as Democrats making excessive demands. What Democrats actually asked for is pretty underwhelming — a continuation of some health insurance subsidies for the poorest Americans. Compare that to how far Republicans moved the goal post to the right since President Trump took office.

So it didn’t work. At least for tonight. Republicans took on more than they could chew. Though if only a few Democrats switch position, a funding bill could be passed at any time.

Tonight Republicans got 55 votes in the Senate, that’s 5 short, on a bill to fund the government. (It wasn’t even a bill to fund the government for the whole 2026 fiscal year but just for another 7 weeks, after which point we’d be back facing a shutdown again.)

And maybe this is what Republicans wanted anyway.

The first are laws that direct payments to individuals or entities based on a benefit formula, such as entitlements like Social Security and Medicare and the federal portion of Medicaid, TANF, SSI, unemployment insurance, and SNAP. This is called, in jargon, "mandatory spending." Mandatory spending makes up about 60% of federal spending, and these laws typically remain in effect until they are repealed.

President Trump’s signature bill formally named the One Big Beautiful Bill, projected to add $4.1 trillion to the deficit over 10 years, affected this type of spending (and taxes).

The federal government also runs on fiscal years from October 1 to September 30, and about 30% of federal spending is tied to fiscal years. Since this type of funding lapses at the end of a fiscal year, or sometimes sooner, Congress must re-enact the funding or agencies funded this way must stop operating, which is informally called a shutdown.

The recent bill that defunded foreign aid (USAID) and public broadcasting (CPB) was a "rescissions bill" which affected this so-called "discretionary" spending.

Let's go deeper.

Discretionary Spending (Appropriations & Authorizations Bills)

In any given year, you may be hearing about the appropriations and authorizations bills that direct "discretionary" spending for the next fiscal year. It's currently September 2025, so Congress is now working on fiscal year 2026, abbreviated FY26, which starts on October 1.

"Appropriations" are part of how Congress directs discretionary spending. For example, Congress might "appropriate" $50 million to a hypothetical Department of Cats and Dogs's Cuddling Program for FY26.

Appropriations are provisions in law passed by Congress and signed by the President (or, very rarely, by overriding the President's veto) that direct federal dollars to be spent by an agency for a broad purpose. Appropriations are written by the powerful House and Senate Appropriations Committees based on their spending priorities for the whole of the government.

If there are no appropriations bills for a fiscal year, that's when a government shutdown occurs because it is also unlawful for agencies to spend money that they have not been appropriated.

The most recent appropriations law is H.R. 1968: Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025, signed by President Trump on March 15. This one bill consolidated the discretionary spending for the whole federal government, but often Congress divides the agencies up among 12 separate bills.

An appropriation is not enough for an agency to spend the funds. Funds can only be spent with both an appropriation and an authorization. An authorization is also a provision in law that looks a lot like an appropriation. The difference is that authorizations are made in bills that come out of the committees that have oversight jurisdiction over the parts of the government spending the funds. This ensures that the legislators most familiar with the government programs have a separate say in how those programs are funded.

So, the hypothetical appropriation above might be authorized by hypothetical House and Senate Committees on Pets which has oversight jurisdiction over the Department of Cats and Dogs.

Military authorizations bills are usually called "must pass" because legislators don't want to be seen as opposing funds for national defense and servicemembers.

Continuing Resolutions (Discretionary Spending)

Oops, legislators couldn't agree on an appropriations bill in time to prevent a government shutdown! (A likely hypothetical.) When that happens, the Continuing Resolution (CR) comes in.

CRs — and by the way that is just jargon, they are regular bills not resolutions — allows agencies to continue to operate by extending the end date of the last appropriations bill. A CR can be as simple as a single line that reads something like "strike the date the funds expire and replace it with ____," a date in the future.

CRs are relatively common. In fact, Congress almost never actually gets its work done on time as shown in this Pew Research article from 2023. The last time Congress passed all twelve regular appropriations bills was 1997. It's a little too late to enact all of the regular appropriations bills for FY26 by September 30, so you should expect either a continuing resolution soon or for the government to shut down.

Rescissions (Discretionary Spending)

The President must spend the money that has been appropriated by law — although that hasn't stopped President Trump from "impounding" funds anyway. But the President can ask Congress to undo an appropriation in a rescission request. The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 requires the Senate to give rescissions requests a vote by simple majority, rather than the usual higher 60 percent threshold that applies to appropriations and most other bills. That makes it easier to cut spending than it is to enact spending.

The recent bill that defunded foreign aid (USAID) and public broadcasting (CPB) was a rescissions bill that repealed appropriations that President Trump had signed into law just months earlier, and it passed with just 51 votes in favor.

Reconciliation (Mandatory Spending)

Now we're back to so-called mandatory spending, the larger portion of federal spending based on benefits formulas and that isn't tied to fiscal years.

Reconciliation bills make modifications only to mandatory spending, taxes, or the debt limit, and, per another part of the same 1974 statute, the Senate must give these bills a simple majority vote too. That makes reconciliation bills an attractive process to enact changes that do not have the support to pass through the 60 percent threshold that applies to advancing regular legislation in the Senate. This filibuster-loophole is what makes reconciliation bills attractive for updating mandatory spending.

The Republican signature bill formally named the One Big Beautiful Bill, projected to add $4.1 trillion to the deficit over 10 years (a 14% increase), was a reconciliation bill.

The reconciliation procedure can only be used a limited number of times each year.

One more note

If you're wondering what that remaining 10% of federal spending is (after the 60% for mandatory spending and 30% for discretionary spending), it's interest payments on the national debt.

This is the “reconciliation” bill, the first signature legislation moved by Republicans in Congress and President Trump. This bill has special rules that make it immune to the Senate filibuster, so it can pass the Senate if a simple majority vote for it.

Here’s the bottom line: The bill has very large cuts to federal government spending, but it has even greater cuts to taxes. So overall, it’s projected to increase the yearly federal deficit by around $230 billion or 10%. (That’s so large that the global bond market has begun to reassess U.S. bonds, making the national debt even more expensive to keep up interest payments.) The last provision of the bill increases the statutory limit to the national debt by $4 trillion.

Some of the biggest cuts are in the low income food assistance program SNAP and medical assistance program Medicaid, in part through cuts and in part by making it harder for Americans to get the assistance.

But about half of those savings to the federal government would be offset by increased funding for the military, border barriers (presumably on the border with Mexico), immigration enforcement, and immigration detention facilities, based on the latest Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate.

The biggest change would be to taxes: higher for low-income earners and lower for high-income earners. CBO estimated that “household resources,” meaning mostly household income but also federal benefits, would decrease by around 4% for the lowest earners and increase by the same amount for the highest earning households. That includes a higher “SALT” tax deduction, which benefits high income earners in high-tax states, restoring it to roughly how it was before President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts. The tax cuts are the main reason the bill adds to the deficit.

Other changes include repeals of laws and funding for green energy, bans on transgender care (originally limited to minors, then expanded to all people) and abortion.

The bill also includes a provision that would limit the enforcement of court orders against the government (see text in bill). This one is quite significant.

The Senate filibuster doesn’t apply to this bill if the Senate limits the bill to changes in taxes and spending, and not broad policy changes, at least according to the reconciliation rules. In the past, the Senate Parliamentarian had the last word on what’s allowed. But there’s some indication the Senate may change the rules to pass broader policy changes: The Senate passed some “Congressional Review Act (CRA)” bills this week in contravention of the ruling of the Parliamentarian related to CRA’s rules.

While the situation is a little complicated, it suggests that if the Senate majority doesn’t like the Parliamentarian’s ruling on what counts as spending or taxes, they may quash a filibuster on H.R. 1 anyway, or fire the Parliamentarian. This would be a significant change to Senate practice.

The text of H.R.1 on GovTrack is out of date. The “manager’s amendment” to H.R. 1, the result of the House Rules Committee meeting held at 1 a.m. Wednesday morning (yes, that’s 1 a.m.), was published only around 9 p.m. Wednesday night (less than 12 hours before the House began voting on the bill around 4 a.m. Thursday). The amendment is 42 pages long and contains some significant changes to the original text.

There will probably be time to read it before the Senate begins its debate.

H.R. 1 passed the House 215-214, with two Republicans and all Democrats voting against.