The House has passed a bill to fund the government through September 30, 2025, hoping to avoid a government shutdown—but will it be enough to keep the lights on?
The final vote was 217 to 213, with only one Republican, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, voting no and one Democrat, Jared Golden of Maine, voting yes. Two Representatives, Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Tim Moore (R-N.C.), did not vote. You can see how your Representative voted here.
The bill is styled as a Continuing Resolution or CR. Typically, discretionary spending for most federal agencies is funded annually. If Congress can’t agree on a spending bill by the start of the fiscal year (that was on October 1, 2024), they will approve temporary measures to fund government activities for a limited time—those are called CRs.
Recent History
Congress did not agree on a full term spending bill last fall. Instead, on September 25, 2024, Congress passed a CR to extend funding through December 20, 2024. It was a short bill—just 21 pages long.
In December, after a contentious and critiqued vote, Congress punted again and voted to fund the government via a second CR through March 14, 2025.
Now, the deadline is again fast approaching. If the House and Senate can’t agree on a spending bill, the government will run out of money—meaning that funding for most federal agencies will end—on Friday, March 15, 2025.
What’s In The Bill
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the bill will cost $1.6 trillion—that breaks down into $893 billion for defense and $708 billion for nondefense spending.
The CR largely mirrors the previous year’s funding measures (as did the earlier CRs) but increases military spending by $6 billion while cutting $13 billion in nondefense spending. It also includes a boost in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportation operations. It also claws back $20.2 billion of IRS funding (this is in addition to earlier cuts).
What’s Not In The Bill
The bill doesn’t include any funding for earmarks or projects in individual states or districts—including additional disaster relief. Republicans cheered that as a “clean” CR, but Democrats have signaled that means the Trump administration could divert funds to other projects, including deportation efforts. Specifically, House Democrats argue that the bill appears to shift major spending decisions away from Congress and to the discretion of the White House. That’s not how budget bills typically work—funds are generally tied to specific agencies and projects.
The bill also doesn’t put any guardrails on Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Democrats in the House had made noise about including language that would limit DOGE’s power but were ultimately not successful.
What else isn’t included? There’s no mention of the federal debt ceiling—that controversial deadline is still looming.
The bill also does not include any changes to Social Security and Medicare, sometimes referred to as “entitlement” spending. That’s to be expected. With discretionary spending, there’s a lot of wiggle room regarding what can be added and what might be cut. But when it comes to entitlement spending, there’s no annual appropriation or subjectivity—the benefit is guaranteed. Any movement in the total amount of benefits paid out generally depends on the number of benefit recipients, although depending on the benefit, the amount may be adjusted for inflation. By law, those benefits will be paid even if there’s a deficit and even if Congress has not passed a budget. The tricky part? Mandatory spending outpaces discretionary spending each year.
(You can find out more about entitlement spending here.)
What’s Next
The legislation now moves to the Senate, where it’s unclear what might happen—remember that the bills must be identical in order to become law, so there’s likely no room for discussion. Republicans have a slim majority in the Senate but will need a handful of Democrats to cross over with a yes vote to overcome a filibuster (that majority is even smaller following Rand Paul’s statement that he plans to vote no).
The deadline to avoid a government shutdown is midnight on March 14, 2025. Initial conversations suggestion that there may not be enough support for the bill to pass—if that happens, both parties have already suggested that the other is to blame.
You can read the text of the House bill here.