Washington — Leaders in Congress released the final four measures to fund the government Tuesday, as lawmakers race to avoid another government shutdown at the end of the month.
Congress has until Jan. 30 to fund the remaining government agencies and programs, after approving a three-bill funding package as part of the effort to end the longest government shutdown in history in November, while the majority of government funding was extended on a temporary basis.
Since then, the House and Senate approved another three-bill funding package, and last week, the House approved two more funding measures, which the Senate is expected to take up upon its return to Washington next week.
House and Senate appropriators released the text of the final package of four bills, known as a “minibus,” Tuesday. The legislation would provide funding related to the departments of Defense; Labor, Health and Human Services, Education; Transportation, Housing and Urban Development and Homeland Security.
The House had dropped plans to include the Homeland Security Department appropriations last week following the deadly shooting of Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis.
Democrats had threatened to withhold their support for the funding if it did not include ICE reforms. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democratic appropriator in the Senate, said in a statement Tuesday that Democrats had reined in the GOP on the funding measure.
“In this bill, Democrats defeated Republicans’ hard-fought push to give ICE an even bigger annual budget, successfully cut ICE’s detention budget and capacity, cut CBP’s budget by over $1 billion, and secured important, although still insufficient, new constraints on DHS,” Murray said. “The bill rejects all Republican poison pill riders and significantly reduces Secretary Noem’s ability to move around funding as she sees fit under a CR.”
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Democrats lauded new restrictions on DHS’ ability to allocate funds for things like immigration enforcement if it does not comply with reporting requirements, along with new training requirements for officers. The funding measure allocates $20 million for body cameras for immigration enforcement agents.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democratic appropriator in the House, acknowledged some of her colleagues “may be dissatisfied with any bill that funds ICE,” adding that while the bill “takes several steps in the right direction,” it doesn’t include broader reforms that Democrats had proposed.
But the two Democratic appropriators urged that neither of the alternatives in the funding fight — a continuing resolution to keep the government funded or a government shutdown — would rein in ICE, due to funding allocated in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year.
The House is expected to vote on the final funding measures before breaking for recess at the end of the week, while the Homeland Security funding measure will likely be considered separately from the other three measures. The package would then move to the Senate, which will have a few days to approve the six funding bills by Jan. 30, before sending them to the president’s desk for his signature.
