Review - HR 5371 Amended and Passed in Senate – FY 2026 CR

Yesterday the Senate finally completed action on HR 5371, the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2026. By votes of 60 to 40, the Senate adopted the substitute language from the Senate Appropriations Committee and then passed the amended bill. The revised language would extend the current spending through January 30^th, 2026 and would pass the three spending bills earlier adopted by the Senate when it passed HR 3944, the FY 2026 MilCon spending bill in August. The revised bill gets a new title of the “Continuing Appropriations, Agriculture, Legislative Branch, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Extensions Act, 2026”.

Moving Forward

Reportedly, the House will be in session tomorrow (still not on the Majority Leader’s calendar) to vote on this bill, violating a whole bunch of promises not to force members to vote on spending bills without adequate time to review the provisions. It appears that the Democratic leadership in the House is trying to convince members to not vote for this bill while their requested ACA subsidies are still not included. This may be important because there could be a number of Republican holdouts that will not want to vote for this bill because of the bipartisan language (and spending allocations) in the three spending bills. It is possible that this Senate deal will not be acceptable to a majority in the House, depending on how well their conference can  hold the Democrats together in opposition.

BTW: The Senate has left town for their Veterans Day Recess. They are scheduled to return to Washington on Tuesday, November 18^th, 2025.

 

For more information on the provisions of this bill, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-5371-amended-and-passed-in-senate - subscription required.

Review – Senate Passes HR 3944 – FY 2026 MilCon Spending Bill

On Friday the Senate started debate on amendments to HR 3944, the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2026. The amendments considered were based upon the substitute language (SA 3411 see discussion below) offered by Sen Collins (R,Me). After adopting 22 amendments (none of specific interest here) and rejecting six, the Senate passed the amended bill by a strongly bipartisan vote of 87 to 9 (2 Republicans, 6 Democrats, and 1 Independent voted Nay, so bipartisan opposition as well).

Substitute Language

Collins had proposed several version of the substitute language amendment over the last two weeks (see here, here, and here for brief discussions about some of the alternatives), but the final version set forth in SA 3411 included three divisions:

Division A – MilCon spending

Division B – ARD spending, and

Division C – Legislative Branch spending

Thus, this bill, if passed in the House and signed by the President would cover a quarter of the twelve spending bills that need to be passed by September 30^th, 2025 (see the discussion below). That would then require a continuing resolution to keep the remainder of the government in operation past October 1^st.

Moving Forward

The bill will head back to the House (who will not be back in Washington until September). There the House will have five options:

• Ignore the Senate version of HR 3944, pass a complete government continuing resolution before October 1^st, 2025,

• Vote for the Senate version, and then pass a rest-of-the-government CR before October 1^st,

• Vote against the Senate version, and request a conference committee, do not pass a revised version before October 1^st, but pass a complete government continuing resolution before October 1^st,

• Vote against the Senate version, and request a conference committee, pass a revised version before October 1^st, and then pass a rest of the government CR before October 1^st, or

• Do not pass anything and shut down the government.

Commentary

The radical-right Republicans are not going to support the Senate version of HR 3944. It does not cut anywhere near enough spending, and it does not include any of the policy riders favored by that fringe. Speaker Johnson is going to have to use Democratic votes to accept the Senate amendments to HR 3944 (or a conferenced version of that bill).

While he has been successful in the past doing that, it does not mean that he will be able to continue to drink from that well. The big question will be does he have the support of the President? I have not seen any commentary on that question and any direction from that source could easily change in the more than a month left before the House could possibly take up the issue. I suspect, however, that if Johnson wants to avoid a shutdown, an early adoption of the Senate language for HR 3944 would give him the best chance to reach a deal with Democrats for a continuing resolution with the least objectionable language for the Republican base. The longer he waits, the harder it is going to be to be to reach a workable compromise on the CR.

 

For more details about the provisions of this bill, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/senate-passes-hr-3944-fy-2026-milcon - subscription required.

HR 3944 Considered in Senate – MilCon Spending – 7-24-25

Yesterday the Senate continued their consideration of HR 3944, the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act. There were 19 amendments proposed with most being proposed revisions to SA 2976, the substitute language that was proposed on Tuesday. The most interesting amendment is SA 3038, another substitute language amendment proposed by Sen Collins (R,ME). Similar to Wednesday’s SA 2977, it would combine some version of the Senate’s Milcon spending language (SA 2976), the Senate’s AER spending bill (S 2256) and the Senate’s CJS spending bill (S 2354). There is too much detail involved to be able to tell the differences between the various versions proposed to date.

HR 3944 Considered in Senate – MilCon Spending – 7-23-25

Yesterday the Senate continued their consideration of HR 3944, the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act. There were 41 amendments proposed with most being proposed revisions to SA 2976, the substitute language that was proposed on Tuesday.

Of potential interest here is SA 2977, another proposed substitute language by Sen Collins (R,Me). Similar to Tuesday’s SA 2976, Division A of that amendment would be the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations portion; Division B would be the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations, portion; Division C would be the Legislative Branch Appropriations, 2026 portion. This version would add Division D, Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations. That Division D language would presumably be based upon S 2354 (a House version has not yet been introduced). At this point it is not clear which version of substitute language will form the basis for the Senate’s consideration of HR 3944.

HR 3944 Considered in Senate – MilCon Spending – 7-22-25

Yesterday the Senate began consideration of HR 3944, the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act with a vote to begin consideration, with a strongly bipartisan vote of 91 to 7. That vote does not signal support for the partisan spending bill passed in the House, but rather showed support for moving forward on the spending bill process.

Twelve amendments to HR 3944 were proposed yesterday. The most important will probably be SA 2976 introduced by Sen Collins (R,ME). This should be the substitute language from the Senate Appropriations Committee that probably form the basis for the Senate debate on HR 3944. It includes, as Division B, the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2026 (taken from S 2256), and, as Division C, Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 2026 (taken from S 2257).

If this bill manages to pass in the Senate, it will do so with at least some bipartisan (60 votes needed for passage) support. That means that there will be spending levels and other provisions (or lack of provisions) that will make it lose significant support from radical Republicans in the House. That would mean the amended bill would require bipartisan support in the House to be sent to the President. That could cause problems for Speaker Johnson, both with the Republican fringe and the President.

Senate to Consider HR 3944 – FY 2026 MilCon Spending

On Thursday the Senate began the process to begin consideration of HR 3944, the FY 2026 Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act. A cloture motion was filed to close debate on the motion to proceed to consideration of HR 3944. The Senate will take up that cloture motion next week.

This begins the lengthy regular order process in the Senate. We should start to see amendments offered next week. Where the House uses the Rules Committee to select which amendments make it to the floor for consideration, the Senate Majority Leader, Sen Thune (R,SD), in consultation with the leadership of both Parties, decides which amendments to consider. Generally, votes in the Senate require a 3/5^th majority vote.

While this bill is of lower interest here than many of the remaining 11 spending bills, this is the one that is most likely to be able to pass in both the Senate and House. Having said that, spending bill language that can meet the 60-vote threshold in the Senate will have a hard time getting past the conservative fringe in the House. This bill will be an interesting look at whether the 119^th Congress can get past recent history and get any spending bills to the President by September 30^th, 2025.

HR 3944 Passed in House – FY 2026 MilCon Spending

This afternoon, after a little more than two hours of debate and processing amendments, the House passed HR 3944, the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2026, by a vote of 218 to 206. Two Democrats {Rep Golden (D,ME) and Rep Perez (D, WA)} voted Aye, no Republican vote Nay.

This is the first of potentially twelve spending bills that should be passed in both the House and Senate before September 30^th, 2025. The near party-line vote would seem to indicate that the bill would not be able to pass in the Senate where 60 votes are needed for passage. But the Senate almost never votes on the House version of a spending bill. Senate language (not yet crafted by the Senate Appropriations Committee) is typically offered as substitute language and amendments are then made to the revised version. A conference committee is then supposed to work out the differences between the two bills with subsequent votes in the House and Senate to pass the conference version of the bill.

Except, that has not happened in years. The House will probably pass six to ten of the 12 spending bills. The Republicans will not be able to put together a working majority to pass the remainder of the bills. It is still an open question if the Senate will take up any of the spending bills. Come the last week in September, if recent history is any guide, the House will offer up a continuing resolution to continue funding the government at something close to the FY 2025 spending amounts. At the end of the calendar year (or maybe even later than that) an agreement of some sort of compromise omnibus spending bill will be reached, and the process will start all over again for the FY 2027 spending bill.

But this year we have the Republicans in nominal control of both the House and Senate, as well the White House, so there is a chance that we will see something different happen. I do not think so, but you never can tell.