The Senate successfully advanced its initial set of government funding bills for fiscal year 2026 before the August break, although Congress is preparing for a challenging situation to avoid a government shutdown in September.

The approved bills allot over $180 billion in discretionary spending for departments such as Veterans Affairs (VA), Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), military construction, and the legislative branch, along with rural development efforts.

The bills were divided into two segments: one achieving an 87-9 vote for military construction, VA, agriculture, and FDA funding; and another receiving an 81-15 vote for legislative branch funding.

These votes concluded a period of uncertainty regarding whether the Senate would commence its recess with any of its 12 annual funding proposals passed.

Senator John Boozman (R-Ark.), who leads the subcommittee that developed the comprehensive VA funding bill, commented that this initial set of bills serves as a “test run.”

“It’s been such a long time since we’ve handled our appropriations bills. Many have simply forgotten the procedures,” he shared with The Hill, mentioning that in the prior session, senators didn’t heavily involve themselves with bills.

Appropriators say the vote marks the first time since 2018 that the Senate has passed funding legislation before the August recess.

“It’s really a matter of just kind of legislating again, and the more we do it, the easier, the easier it’ll be as we go back,” Boozman said. 

In the past week, senators had gone through several iterations of their first funding package of the year, as leaders on both sides worked through frustrations in their ranks over proposed spending levels and actions by the Trump administration that incensed Democrats.

Well over half of the funding approved Friday is included in the annual VA and military construction bill, which calls for upwards of $153 billion in discretionary funding for fiscal 2026. That includes about $133 billion for the VA and roughly $20 billion for the Department of Defense military construction program. More than $113 billion in discretionary funding would go toward VA medical care.

The annual agricultural funding plan calls for $27 billion in discretionary funding for fiscal 2026. It includes $8.2 billion for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), about $7 billion in funding for the Food and Drug Administration, roughly $1.7 billion for rental assistance, and nearly $1.23 billion for the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS). 

Democrats have also highlighted $240 million in funding in the bill for the McGovern-Dole Food for Education program, which was targeted in President Trump’s latest budget request.

The annual legislative branch funding plan calls for about $7 billion for House and Senate operations, the U.S. Capitol Police and agencies like the Library of Congress (LOC), the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and the Architect of the Capitol.

Capitol Police would see a boost under the plan, along with the CBO, while funding for the LOC, the CRS and the GAO would be kept at fiscal 2025 levels. Lawmakers also agreed to $44.5 million in emergency funds aimed at beefing up security and member protection, citing safety concerns following the shootings of Minnesota lawmakers earlier this year.

Republicans had previously been uncertain about whether the third bill would be passed as part of the package this week until Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), a senior appropriator, said a deal was worked out to allow him to vote on the measure separately from the other bills. Kennedy has criticized the legislative branch funding bill for its proposed spending levels.

“It just doesn’t seem appropriate for us to be spending that much extra while everybody else has to take a cut,” he told reporters in late July. “Now, some of my colleagues point out, yes, but the extra spending is for member security.”

“If you’re going to spend extra money on member security, find a pay-for within the bill. I just think the optics are terrible and the policy is terrible,” he said. “We ought to hold ourselves to the same standard we’re holding everybody else, and that’s why I’m going to vote no.”

Republicans also blame Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s (D-Md.) resistance to the Trump administration’s relocation plans for the FBI’s headquarters for weighing down efforts to pass the annual Justice Department funding bill.

Senators had initially expected that bill, which also funds the Commerce Department and science-related agencies, to be part of the package until those plans fell apart earlier this week amid a clash over Trump administration plans to relocate the FBI headquarters. 

Speaking from the Senate floor on Thursday, Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the subcommittee that crafted the annual funding deal, said he had been pushing for an amendment aimed at ensuring the FBI would “have a level 5 security headquarters.”

He noted his previous attempt during committee consideration that temporarily led to the adoption of an amendment to the DOJ funding bill that sought to block President Trump’s plans to keep the FBI’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. However, the change was later scrapped after staunch GOP opposition threatened to tank the bill. 

“It didn’t happen because members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Republicans and Democrats, didn’t think that was the right thing to do – to preserve what we had set out before and make sure that the men and women [of the FBI] have a level 5 security headquarters,” he said. “We did it because the President of the United States was going to throw a fit if that provision stayed on.”

Van Hollen said he hopes the bill will be able to “get back on track” in September. However, Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas), chair of the subcommittee alongside Van Hollen, offered a rather gloomy outlook for the bill’s next steps after recess. He argued much of the focus in September is likely to be on getting a deal on a funding stopgap, also known as a continuing resolution (CR), to keep the government funded beyond the Sept. 30 shutdown deadline.

“When we get back from recess, we’ll move to working on the CR to get us so I would guess if the CJS has a path, it’s probably just the CR and will continue,” Moran said. “All the work that we’ve done goes away, and we’ll go back to CR and fund those agencies at the same level and same way that we did last year.”

“Every time we say we want to do appropriation bills, then there’s someone who has a reason that, ‘Not this time,’ ‘Not this one,’ ‘Not – because I didn’t get what I want,’” he said. “And this time we’re arguing over an amendment that was allowed to the senator who’s objecting, but he wanted a commitment that he get the outcome he wants.”

“And he didn’t win in committee, and he wouldn’t win on the Senate floor, but he can, I wouldn’t think, but he can make his case. But he rejected that option,” he said.