Sonam Drolma (@greentara.bsky.social)

Final spending bills move closer to House passage The House will take a separate vote on Homeland Security funding alongside a three-bill package funding the largest federal agencies. House Republicans sent the last four fiscal 2026 spending bills over a key procedural hurdle Thursday, setting up two votes later in the day to send them together to the Senate. Republicans stayed mostly united on the 214-213 test vote to advance the package that would fund the Pentagon and departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, and Education, as well as a separate measure to fund the Homeland Security Department through Sept. 30. The vote was held open for nearly an hour as Speaker Mike Johnson first negotiated with Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) to flip her vote, and then undertook a lengthy negotiation with Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) and Zach Nunn (R-Iowa). Boebert and Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) both flipped their votes to yes, and Nunn and Ogles voted in favor. The Homeland Security piece is politically fraught, with Democrats angry about immigration enforcement tactics under President Donald Trump requesting a separate vote on the measure. While bipartisan negotiators included some new fetters on ICE, some Democrats are calling to defund the agency entirely. Before the rule was adopted, the House voted 427-0 to include language in the DHS bill to block payments to senators whose phone data was collected during probes under the Biden administration into Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. The proposal would block the payments that were codified in a stopgap spending bill signed into law last year, unbeknownst to many lawmakers. The payments are broadly unpopular among House members, and leadership is hoping the repeal could be a sweetener for the DHS bill, which has an uphill battle to passage. The other three bills — Defense, Labor-HHS-Education and Transportation-HUD — will be voted on together as a package. The vote Thursday to move forward with consideration of the funding measures will also allow floor votes on amendments sought by conservatives, including proposals to kill some earmarks and block enforcement of vehicle “kill switch” technology. Conservative hard-liners were pleased to have more input and opportunity for amendments on these bills after they threatened to block an earlier spending package. Another group the leaders had to appease were farm-state Republicans upset that a provision allowing year-round sales of E15 fuel was not included in the spending package. To placate them, leadership agreed to set up a congressional working group focused on ethanol policy. These are the final four fiscal 2026 spending bills and if the House passes them, the Senate will be trying to clear them ahead of the Jan. 30 deadline to avoid another government shutdown. http://dlvr.it/TQVm9m