Washington managed to avoid a government funding crisis this time, with the House passing a stopgap spending bill ahead of the fiscal year deadline.
The federal government's fiscal year runs from October 1 to September 30, and Congress must pass spending bills, or a short-term stopgap known as a continuing resolution, to keep agencies funded each year. Last fall, lawmakers missed that deadline, and the government went through a lengthy shutdown that stretched for more than a month before a funding deal was reached. That experience, with furloughed federal workers, delayed services, and disruption that touched everything from air travel to federal benefits processing, was fresh in the minds of lawmakers heading into this year's deadline.
This time, the House passed a stopgap funding measure in September that kept agencies funded past the October 1 cutoff, averting a shutdown. A continuing resolution does not set new spending levels. It simply extends current funding for a set period, buying lawmakers more time to negotiate full-year spending bills. The measure still needed to move through the rest of the legislative process, but its passage removed the immediate risk of agencies running out of money at the start of the new fiscal year.
For most Americans, a stopgap bill like this one is easy to miss, since its entire purpose is to keep things running normally. But the alternative, a shutdown, has real effects: federal workers go without pay until funding resumes, some government services slow down or pause, and agencies that handle everything from small business loans to national parks can be affected depending on how long a lapse lasts.
Lawmakers will now turn to negotiating longer-term spending bills before the stopgap measure expires, the next deadline that will determine whether funding fights resurface later this year.
What is a continuing resolution?
It is a short-term funding measure Congress uses to keep federal agencies open at current spending levels while lawmakers continue negotiating full-year budgets.
Did this avoid a shutdown entirely?
Yes, the stopgap bill kept the government funded past the start of the new fiscal year, avoiding an immediate shutdown.