Another Partial Government Shutdown This Weekend, but Could be Short

A Continuing Resolution (CR) keeping parts of the government operating, including Defense, expires at midnight tonight. This afternoon the Senate passed an amended version of legislation that would fund many of them, but the bill must return to the House for approval. Over the weekend they will run out of funds creating another partial government shutdown, but it could be short if the House quickly agrees to the Senate’s version.

Action on six of the 12 FY2026 appropriations bills, including the one that funds NASA and NOAA, is completed, but the other six are still under consideration: Defense, Financial Services, Homeland Security, Labor-HHS, State-Foreign Ops (called National Security-State Dept in the House), and Transportation-HUD (THUD).

The Defense bill funds the U.S. Space Force. THUD funds the FAA and its Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST).

The six bills are combined together in a “minibus,” a smaller version of an “omnibus” that incorporates all 12 bills. It passed the House earlier this month, but as three different bills. The Homeland Security bill was separated from the others because it funds Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and is very controversial. That cleared the House on a narrow vote of 220-207.

The House decided to merge all six bills together to send to the Senate and then recessed for the rest of the month — past the CR’s January 30 expiration date.

The expectation was the Senate would agree despite opposition from many Democrats in order to avoid another shutdown, but the incident in Minneapolis last weekend with the killing of Alex Pretti fundamentally changed the dynamics. During this past week, enough Senators and the White House reached agreement to remove the Homeland Security bill from the package and replace it with a two-week CR, with the other five bills unchanged.

The Senate voted in favor of that this afternoon, but because they modified the bill it now must go back to the House. Both chambers must agree on identical text.  It means another shutdown for the departments and agencies in those six bills until it passes.

Late this evening, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise released the schedule for next week with this bill listed for Tuesday or later. To keep the shutdown short, enough House Democrats and, since it has President Trump’s endorsement, enough Republicans, are expected to support it, but there are no guarantees.

If they do pass the amended bill, it has $41.755 million for FAA/AST, slightly less than the $42.179 million requested. FAA/AST had $42.018 million in FY2025.

The U.S. Space Force would get $26.135 billion: $1.494 billion for Military Personnel (MilPers), $5.688 billion for Operations and Maintenance (O&M), $14.917 billion for Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E), and $4.036 billion for procurement. The total is close to the $26.265 billion requested.

The Space Force received an additional $13.843 billion in the reconciliation bill (the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, OBBBA). That would bring its FY2026 funding to $39.978 billion.

 

This article has been updated.