(Bloomberg) - The US Congress is set to avoid another government shutdown later this month by passing compromise bills that would soften spending cuts sought by the Trump administration, according to Republicans and Democrats involved in the process.
That would prevent a repeat of the 2025 government shutdown which disrupted government services and data for a record 43 days.
The bipartisan cooperation ahead of a Jan. 30 funding deadline is a remarkable turn of events after Democrats blocked stopgap funding in October and November in a failed attempt to exert policy influence — in that case, extending Obamacare subsidies.
Despite surging Democratic opposition in recent weeks to immigration raids in Minnesota and elsewhere ordered up by President Donald Trump’s administration, lawmakers have signaled they won’t shut the government down over the issue. Likewise, the now-expired health care subsidies — which show little sign of being revived — also aren’t seen as an impediment to reaching a new funding deal.
“We are not going to shut down,” said Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee that oversees government spending.
“Clearly everybody is trying to get there,” agreed Tom Cole, the Republican who chairs the House Appropriations Committee. “I feel good about where we are at.”
Most of the government is currently operating on a stopgap through Jan. 30. Yet even if there was a hangup now, its effects would be far less pronounced than during the last shutdown a few months ago.
After enacting three annual spending bills late last year, the House this month has advanced five more of the 12 annual funding bills with super-majority votes. It is poised to release a bipartisan final four-bill package next week. The Senate, meanwhile, has passed six of the bills passed by the House.
Hard compromises were needed in order to make sure Congress — and not the White House’s budget office — is once again directing US discretionary spending, said Senator Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee.
“You don’t win anything if you take your ball and go home,” Murray said.
ICE Battle
The collaborative spirit is hitting one key snag — on funding for the Department of Homeland Security.
Faulting ICE for causing unrest in cities like Minneapolis, and furious about reports of agents violently detaining US citizens and legal immigrants, progressive Democrats are calling for funding cuts and limitations on immigration enforcement agents.
Lawmakers, however, see little chance that the DHS will face a messy funding lapse that could see US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents walking the streets of Minnesota forced to temporarily work without pay.
That’s because progressive Democrats have made clear in public and private they aren’t seeking a government shutdown to achieve their goals.
And while progressives are poised to vote against new funding for the agency, enough Senate moderates are expected to vote to advance a DHS bill and avoid any filibuster attempt.
A fallback option if talks fail would be to put the agency on a stopgap spending bill that allows current levels of spending to continue, lawmakers said.
“We are not going to solve this problem, but we can constrain some of the illegality,” said Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, a lead negotiator on the DHS bill.
Democratic Demands
Murphy and fellow Democrats are seeking to require body cameras for ICE agents, forbid the use of masks on patrol and no-warrant searches, as well as barring raids on schools and houses of worship. They are also seeking constraints on the ability of DHS to pull money from accounts earmarked for other services in order to cover the cost of stepped-up immigration raids.
The Democratic demands come after the ICE shooting of US citizen activist Renee Good in Minnesota galvanized liberal opposition to the expanded immigration raids by the Trump administration. The administration has said the killing was justified by self-defense, while Democrats have said the officer overreacted.
Still, Democratic leaders are avoiding messaging around the words “defund ICE” after the slogan proved politically damaging in past election cycles. Instead they have settled on demanding no funding increases for ICE and US Border Patrol.
Any such limitations would have minimal impact, as Trump’s already-enacted tax bill included a $175 billion infusion for border and immigration enforcement.
Some progressive Democrats signaled they want the party to fight harder — and to be prepared to insist on cuts if Democrats win the House majority in the November midterm elections.
“It’s very clear that people are horrified at what’s happening in Minneapolis, and they want to see robust Democratic response,” said liberal firebrand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. “I certainly don’t think that we should support expanded funding, and I will not vote for expanded funding.”
Leading progressive Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington said that making demands now is about laying the groundwork to cut immigration enforcement funding if Democrats take control of the House after the midterms.
“For me, it’s also about what happens when we have the gavels back, preparing the road for that moment,” she said.
DOGE Rebuffed
The bills that have advanced so far mostly reject large domestic spending cuts demanded by Trump. While the Internal Revenue Service and Environmental Protection Agency are set to see reductions, they’re far smaller than those sought by the president.
The legislation also rejects Trump’s attempts to decimate the National Science Foundation, NASA’s science budget, and circumvent an attempt to send Army Corps of Engineers funding only to Republican-controlled states. The State Department funding bill is $19 billion above Trump’s proposal.
Cole said Republicans aren’t trying to constrain Trump, noting that overall spending will be cut in 2026 compared to 2025.
Democrats say they expect the administration to try to flout the law and impound spending, however passage of the bills would also boost litigation to stop that.
For example, foreign aid is continued under the measures even if government functions are transfered from the shuttered USAID to the State Department. Entire agencies that Trump wanted shuttered like the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for Democracy are continued in the package, while funding for weather and census data are restored.
The funding of some US foreign aid marks a rebuff to Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, which attempted to end it.
Senator Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat who helped negotiate the spending bill, said there has always been a bipartisan understanding that foreign aid is a relatively cheap way to project power abroad.
“And we lost that for about six months,” he said, “but we’re putting the band back together.”
By Erik Wasson and Ken Tran (BGOV)
