The Senate voted 90-6 on August 8 to fund the government through December 11. The House has not yet agreed to that bill. Federal money runs out at midnight on September 30, and lawmakers were due back from recess around August 31, which leaves a few weeks.
The Senate measure, H.R. 6500, is a stopgap. The House passed its own version on July 21 by 220-205, with six Democrats voting yes. That one runs through December 4. Both chambers want to avoid a shutdown; the problem is that the two bills differ by seven days. Until the House votes on the Senate’s date or the two sides reconcile, nothing can go to the president. According to a tracking update from August 24, that vote was still outstanding.
A short list of bad precedents
Nobody in Washington has forgotten the past year. A 43-day shutdown ran from October 1 to November 12, 2025. A 76-day lapse affecting only the Department of Homeland Security followed, from February 14 to April 30, 2026, the longest single-agency funding lapse in U.S. history. Both grew out of a fight over immigration enforcement after the killing of Alex Pretti by Customs and Border Protection agents. A shorter lapse hit roughly half of federal departments for four days in late January and early February.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated the 2025 shutdown cost about $11 billion in real GDP by the first quarter of the 2027 fiscal year. About 900,000 federal employees were furloughed.
The House Appropriations Committee moved early this year, introducing its stopgap in July so that, in the committee’s words, shutdown brinkmanship would not turn into a late-September crisis. Even so, House Republican hard-liners have used funding bills as leverage in a separate fight over the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and photo ID at the polls. They let the July vote go ahead without attaching it. Senate Democrats argue the two earlier shutdowns show Republican leaders cannot assemble enough bipartisan votes in the Senate, where spending bills need 60 to beat a filibuster.
What a lapse would do
Social Security and Medicare payments to current recipients would continue. Active-duty military, air traffic controllers and federal law enforcement would work without pay. Grant processing, permit approvals and other administrative services are the likeliest to stall. Furloughed and excepted federal employees are entitled to back pay when funding returns. Contractors do not get the same automatic guarantee.
The House could technically accept the Senate’s December 11 date in one legislative day. Previous fights this fiscal year suggest that unrelated disputes tend to get attached. The same thing happened in September 2025, and that standoff ended in the 43-day shutdown.
On the full-year bills, the House had passed 3 of 12 as of mid-2026. The Senate had passed none.
