Senate’s stopgap funding bill rejects special requests for Trump battleship, munitions

WASHINGTON — Senate appropriators on Sunday unveiled a bipartisan continuing resolution that would keep federal funding flowing until Dec. 11, but rejected a White House request to provide $1 billion for the Trump-class battleship program.

If passed, the continuing resolution (CR) would prevent the government from shutting down on Oct. 1, when fiscal 2027 starts and as lawmakers depart Capitol Hill ahead of midterm elections in November. The bill is set to move through a procedural vote tonight.

The Senate’s CR is different from the House-passed version in several key aspects. For one, it extends funding for a slightly longer period of time than the House bill, which funds federal agencies until Dec. 4.

The Senate bill also contains a number of special funding exceptions, known as “anomalies,” by the White House — which were not submitted before the House passed its own version of the bill. However, Senate appropriators did not include most of the anomalies tied to the Defense Department.

Continuing resolutions typically only fund federal agencies at the prior year’s spending rate, but anomaly requests can be added to expedite money for new or existing programs or purchase more equipment than allotted in the last fiscal year. One of those anomalies for this CR was a request by the Pentagon for Congress to include $1 billion for the Trump-class battleship.

“Without the anomaly, the Department would be unable to begin advance procurement of the nuclear propulsion work necessary for ship construction,” the White House said in a list of anomalies provided to Congress.

The Senate bill also denied a request for language that would have allowed the Pentagon to obligate funding for five key munitions programs, several of which have been depleted during Operation Epic Fury: the Patriot system’s PAC-3 interceptor, Tomahawk cruise missile, AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, and two different Standard Missile-3 variants.

“Without the anomaly, the Government may incur cancellation liabilities on multi-year procurement contracts if it does not order the negotiated production quantities,” the White House stated.

Senate appropriators rejected that request and instead included the typical boilerplate language forbidding the Pentagon from using the money granted under the CR to start work on new programs or to initiate multiyear production contracts.

The Senate bill also does not seem to include language requested by the Pentagon that would have exempted funding granted to the department in last year’s reconciliation bill from “sequestration,” or automatic spending cuts. Without the exemption, the White House said about 8 percent of the unobligated reconciliation funds would be made unavailable.

The Senate is expected to pass its CR this week before starting August recess. The House, which is already on recess, passed its version of the CR on July 21. Both bills will have to be merged into a compromise version, or one chamber will have to adopt the other chamber’s bill, for the CR to go to President Donald Trump’s desk and be signed into law.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, called the CR a “major step” toward preventing a government shutdown.

“This measure gives Congress the time we need to continue our work on bipartisan appropriations bills, which are always my strong preference for handling annual government funding,” she said.

Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the ranking Democrat on the committee, praised the CR for paring back the Trump administration’s request for “new funding and flexibilities for the Pentagon,” while including anomalies for housing and food programs.

“It’s good that we were able to produce a much-improved CR to keep the government funded and avert a shutdown that no one wants,” she said.