The Senate on Saturday (8 August) passed a stopgap spending bill to avert a government shutdown at the end of September, in a bipartisan effort to head off a major spending skirmish before the midterm elections.
Senate vote passes 90-6 to fund government through December
Senators approved the stopgap measure by 90 votes to six, with one member voting present, extending current funding levels well past the original 30 September deadline. The bill also blocks the Trump administration from shifting funds toward Border Patrol, a restriction Democrats had made a condition of their support.
Whether the agreement, hashed out among senators, can clear the House remains uncertain, though members there are said to share the same reluctance to risk a shutdown before November.
What stood out as much as the vote itself was its timing. Congress has grown accustomed to funding fights that go down to the wire, but this bill passed with more than a month to spare. Two shutdowns within the past year, combined with the political pressure of an approaching election, appear to have concentrated minds early.
Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who chairs the Appropriations Committee, framed the vote as a lesson learned. “After three unnecessary lapses in funding during the fiscal year 2026 cycle, putting the possibility of yet another harmful shutdown off the table should be a priority for each and every one of us,” she said.
Stopgap funding bill blocks Trump from redirecting Border Patrol money
For Democrats, the bill’s restriction on redirecting money to Border Patrol carried particular weight. The issue sat at the centre of the previous shutdown, and its inclusion this time was treated by the party as a meaningful concession.
Patty Murray of Washington, the senior Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, described the bill as buying time for tougher negotiations ahead. “This is an important step forward to prevent a shutdown no one wants and provide the runway we need to negotiate funding bills in the months ahead as we fight to rein in Trump’s corruption and make life more affordable for families back home,” she said.
Intoxicating hemp product ban delay sparks Republican revolt
The smoothest part of the process was not the funding itself but a late addition concerning intoxicating hemp products, inserted into the bill at Trump’s request. The provision delays by a month a ban on such products that Congress had approved and Trump had signed into law the previous year, a ban that was due to take effect in November.
Republican leaders added the delay to the stopgap legislation at the White House’s urging, a decision that angered some within their own party. A group of Republican senators attempted to strip the provision out entirely.
Ted Budd of North Carolina argued forcefully for letting the original ban proceed on schedule, pointing to the packaging and branding used by companies selling the products. “It’s no accident that these products are made to look exactly like something that a kid would want,” he said, warning that the hemp industry was working “to permanently entrench their intoxicating products into the machinery of government.”
The delay stands to benefit the son-in-law of Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, who runs companies that distribute and sell intoxicating hemp-derived gummies and vapes marketed under names such as “Trainwreck” and “Blueberry Cookies.”
White House defends hemp delay as health measure for veterans
The White House defended the one-month reprieve as a measure that would support veterans and patients managing pain, rather than a concession to industry. That argument prevailed. Senators voted 61 to 32 to reject the effort to remove the delay, allowing it to remain in the final bill.
