FY2027 Appropriations: The House Has Passed 3 of 12 Bills, the Senate None, With Funding Running Out December 11

Ten days into fiscal 2027, Congress has finished none of the twelve bills that fund the government. The House has passed three: Military Construction and Veterans Affairs on 15 May by 400 votes to 15, Agriculture on 4 June by 213 to 210, and National Security and State on 15 July by 217 to 209. The Senate hasn’t marked up a single one. Everything runs on a stopgap that expires on 11 December.

The Congressional Research Service tracks the bills one by one. Its September update is a record of how far apart the two chambers are.

The House did its committee work

House appropriators reported all twelve bills between April and June 2026, mostly on party-line votes. Military Construction and VA got through committee 58 to 0. The rest passed with margins like 34 to 27.

The House numbers sit close to this year’s levels for most of the government. Agriculture comes in at $26.3 billion against $26.7 billion enacted for fiscal 2026. Commerce, Justice and Science is $77.3 billion against $78.0 billion. Financial Services is $25.3 billion against $26.3 billion. The national security and State Department bill drops from $50.0 billion to $47.3 billion. Military construction and veterans rise, from $153.3 billion to $157.0 billion.

The House defence bill has a total allocation of $1.072 trillion. It includes pay raises of 7% for junior enlisted troops, 6% for mid-grade ranks and 5% for senior officers, and more than $7.5 billion for hypersonic weapons. The Homeland Security bill provides about $64.9 billion plus a $28.4 billion disaster adjustment, below the $118.4 billion requested, because ICE and the Border Patrol now get most of their money from a separate reconciliation law.

The Senate never started

Senate appropriators have no subcommittee allocations, no budget resolution for the year’s spending and no bills. In early June Chair Susan Collins cancelled markups two weeks in a row. Patty Murray, the top Democrat, said the two sides were miles apart, and rejected what she called a lopsided offer with a huge defence number and nothing for the rest of government.

That’s the core fight. The President asked for a large increase in defence and a 10% cut to everything else. Republicans in the Senate need Democratic votes to pass spending bills. Democrats won’t trade a defence surge for nondefence cuts.

The stopgap

The continuing resolution, Public Law 119-103, passed the Senate 90 to 6 in August and the House 370 to 48 on 1 September. It keeps agencies at fiscal 2026 rates until 11 December. CBO puts its annualised discretionary budget authority at about $1.701 trillion.

For the Pentagon, a stopgap is a particular problem. It runs at $838.5 billion under the CR, far below the $1.5 trillion requested, and can’t start new programmes. GAO counts this as the 38th time in 50 years the Defense Department has begun a fiscal year on a continuing resolution.

What happens on 11 December

The lame-duck Congress, after the 3 November midterms, will have three choices: an omnibus or a series of smaller packages, another stopgap into 2027, or a lapse for some agencies. The same deadline also catches the flood insurance programme and surface transportation funding.

A second stopgap is the likeliest outcome. If it comes, fiscal 2027 will follow the pattern of the last two years: most of the government funded months late, at last year’s levels, with the big policy arguments pushed into the next Congress.