Rule Hearing for Last Minibus and DHS Spending Bills

This afternoon the House Rules Committee announced that it would hold a rule hearing tomorrow on two spending bills; HR 7148 - Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026, and HR 7147 - Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2026. HR 7148 is the 4^th FY 2026 minibus and includes DOD, LHH, and THUD spending bills. HR 7147 is an attempt at crafting a bipartisan DHS Spending bill.

As with the three earlier minibus bills that have passed in the House, the Rules Committee page includes an explanatory statement for each of the bill’s divisions.

Division A - Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2026,

Division B - Departments of Labor, Health And Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2026, and

Division D - Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2026,

According to the ‘Front Matters’ explanatory statement, there was a Division C - Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2026, but it was moved to HR 7147. Apparently, the leadership decided that they did not want to chance that concerns about immigration theatrics endangering the passage of the three remaining spending bills in HR 7148.

The rule hearing is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon and it is likely to run late into the evening. The Housse should vote on both bills on Thursday. This would give the Senate a chance to squeeze all three spending bills into floor votes before midnight on January 30^th, 2026, the deadline for the current spending bill.

There are questions about whether there is a chance that this DHS spending bill (or any DHS spending bill in the current environment) can pass in the Senate. A press release from Sen Murray (D,WA), Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, makes the following point:

““What we have seen from Kristi Noem’s Department of Homeland Security is frankly sick and un-American. ICE is out-of-control, terrorizing people, including American citizens, and actively making our communities less safe. ICE must be reined in, and unfortunately, neither a CR nor a shutdown would do anything to restrain it, because, thanks to Republicans, ICE is now sitting on a massive slush fund it can tap whether or not we pass a funding bill. The suggestion that a shutdown in this moment might curb the lawlessness of this administration is not rooted in reality: under a CR and in a shutdown, this administration can do everything they are already doing—but without any of the critical guardrails and constraints imposed by a full-year funding bill.”