Senate appropriators release CR to 11 December, blocking OMB grant rule

Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) released the text of the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2027 on 2 August 2026, a stopgap that “continues current government funding levels until December 11th” — one week past the 4 December end date of H.R. 9770, the continuing resolution the House passed 220-205 on 21 July (see House passes FY2027 stopgap to 4 December; Senate rewrite expected).¹² Collins said the measure “includes necessary adjustments for programs like the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), vital national security programs, including shipbuilding across multiple vessels, and the Disaster Relief Fund,” and “avoids any poison pills.”¹ The release states the agreement “prevents the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)‘s proposed rule regarding federal financial assistance from taking effect” — a rule Collins said she had opposed in a 6 July letter “citing its potential to politicize grants and harm small, rural communities, families, and biomedical research.”¹ Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said on 31 July, “we filed on it today, we’re setting it up, we’re hoping to vote next week” — ahead of the Senate’s August recess and 60 days from the 1 October start of fiscal year 2027.³

1. The OMB provision is the bipartisan hinge: Appropriations Vice Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) tied Democratic support to restraining the proposed grant rule — “We’re talking about a resolution to that,” she said, adding Democrats would act “[a]s soon as Thune brings it up” — while Collins called the rule “deeply flawed” and Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said “I am hoping it goes away.”³ A rider preventing a proposed rule from taking effect operates through the appropriations power: the funding condition binds the agency for the period of the act.¹

2. The two chambers now hold different vehicles — different titles, end dates a week apart, and the Senate’s adjustments — so identical-text passage requires one chamber to accept the other’s version; with the House already home for its five-week August recess, a Senate-passed stopgap would await House action in September against the 30 September funding deadline.¹⁴ Collins called the release “a major step toward averting a damaging shutdown that only harms vital programs and federal workers” — the FY2026 cycle produced the longest full-scope funding lapse in U.S. history and a separate 76-day Department of Homeland Security lapse (see Longest shutdown in US history ends and DHS shutdown ends after 76 days).¹