On day 21 of the federal government shutdown, the political tensions and policy differences that contributed to it appeared likely to destroy any chance for the GOP-controlled Congress to find the bipartisanship needed to pass the dozen bills needed to fund the government. 

While that is very inside baseball, failing to approve the 12 appropriations bills will block lawmakers’ funding requests for high-profile projects in their home states, known as earmarks, from becoming law—like highway construction, water systems, education projects, research facilities and more, reports Jennifer Shutt of States Newsroom. 

A full-year stopgap spending bill would also cause significant headaches for departments throughout the government – including Alcohol & Tobacco Tax & Trade Bureau – that have faced challenges adjusting to the series of stopgaps that funded the government for the last year, even without the turmoil of the layoffs and funding cancellations enacted by the Donald Trump administration.

The full-year spending bills are also the best chance Congress has to exercise its constitutional authority over government spending and are supposed to spur debate about where taxes paid by Americans can most help the country. 

Skipping that process and avoiding tough conversations about where funding is most needed, and where it is not, absolves lawmakers of a core job responsibility — securing money to help their constituents have better lives. 

As of Tuesday, Democrats and Republicans appeared nowhere near any kind of deal to reopen the government, which has been shuttered since Oct. 1. Members of the House are not in session and last voted on Sept. 19. The Senate has voted unsuccessfully 11 times on the same House-passed stopgap spending bill, failing to gain the 60 votes needed for it to advance. 

'Extremely harmful’ effect of another stopgap 

Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she’s opposed to using what’s called a continuing resolution for the rest of the fiscal year instead of working out an agreement on the full-year government funding bills. 

“The impacts of another year-long CR would be extremely harmful to federal programs, particularly the Department of Defense, and should be avoided at all costs,” Collins said. 

Congress used three continuing resolutions to keep government funded during the last fiscal year, which ended on Sept. 30. 

Lawmakers have relied on stopgap spending bills to fund the government for the entire fiscal year a handful of times during the past several decades. 

But Congress has not used stopgap spending bills for two consecutive years since the late 1970s, according to a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. 

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security appropriations subcommittee, was far more pessimistic than many of his colleagues.

“I think you’re living in a world that does not exist,” Murphy told States Newsroom. “I think 2025 is totally unlike every other year that has existed before. Our democracy is literally dying under our feet. The president is engaged in mass scale illegality and corruption, and nothing that we have done here in the past will be precedent for what will happen in the future. The House of Representatives has never boycotted Washington for a month-and-a-half. The majority party has never refused to negotiate with the minority party. So I think we're in really uncharted waters, and nothing can happen until the House Republicans return and Senate Republicans decide to negotiate.”

Senate Republicans lunch with Trump

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said after a lunch at the White House with President Donald Trump and other GOP senators that talks about the full-year government funding bills can only begin after the shutdown ends. 

“We want a normal appropriations process. We want to give them an opportunity to sit down and litigate some of the issues they want to talk about,” Thune said. “But that can't happen until the government gets opened up again.”

North Dakota Republican Sen. John Hoeven, chairman of the Agriculture appropriations subcommittee, said a full-year continuing resolution is "absolutely" possible if the process doesn’t start moving forward soon. 

But Hoeven declined to say if he’d vote for a stopgap spending bill that voids the appropriations process for the second year in a row. And said he’s “of course” concerned about the negative impacts of a full-year continuing resolution. 

“I don't want to get ahead of the process. What I want to do is get government open and get back to regular order,” Hoeven said. 

Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee and a senior appropriator, said it will take real leadership in both chambers to get any movement on the full-year bills. He also said he’s vehemently opposed to a stopgap spending bill for the entire year. 

“I think if we vote for a full-year CR, we've fully abdicated our responsibility, constitutionally, to be the power of the purse,” Reed said. 

South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds, who sits on the Appropriations Committee, said he “could not support a full-year CR.”

“We've gotten so much of the work done, and now it's just a matter of whether or not Democrats allow us to bring them to the floor,” Rounds said, referring to the full-year Defense spending bill that failed to advance last week. 

Rounds said he thinks Democrats are struggling to figure out a way to end the government shutdown, which would potentially allow work on the full-year bills to get going again. 

“I think they made a very serious strategic error when they decided to jump on and to shut down government in the first place,” Rounds said. “And now they don't have a graceful way out, and that's a problem.”

Process, interrupted

Normally, by now, Republicans and Democrats would have agreed how much to spend on defense and domestic programs and divvied up that roughly $1.8 trillion to the dozen full-year government spending bills. 

The lawmakers tasked with writing those appropriations bills would have started meeting to work out spending levels and policy differences between the original House bills and the original Senate bills. 

That is all on hold because of the shutdown and may never even happen, potentially leading Republicans to write a stopgap spending bill for the rest of the year. 

Alabama Republican Sen. Katie Britt, chairwoman of the Homeland Security appropriations subcommittee, said she wants Democrats to vote to reopen the government, so she can get back to working on her full-year appropriations bill. 

“I want to do my job, which is why I am so frustrated that we didn't get to move forward with appropriations bills on Thursday,” Britt said, also referring to the Defense bill. “I think it was incredibly short-sighted of my Democratic colleagues to vote that down, because this is our opportunity to actually do work for the American people. And I think we should get our job done, not pass the buck.” 

Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, the top Democrat on the State-Foreign Operations appropriations subcommittee, said he still has “hope for the appropriations process.”

“Obviously, we have to get through the shutdown, but there's bipartisan desire to get something done and to avoid a full-year CR,” Schatz said, adding that it’s hard to do anything with the House out of session. 

New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Agriculture appropriations subcommittee, opposes using a full-year continuing resolution over negotiating bipartisan versions of the full-year government funding bills. 

“I am concerned about a full-year CR, and I do think that we should get back to the appropriations process and get those bills done,” Shaheen said. “I think there's interest on both sides of the aisle to do that.”

Uncharted waters

Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin, the top Democrat on the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations subcommittee, said that GOP leaders will have to accept the regular give-and-take of bipartisan negotiations if they want to get anything through the upper chamber. 

“I think first and foremost, we have to really make sure that Speaker (Mike) Johnson recognizes that the only way forward with appropriations and other matters is a bipartisan way forward,” Baldwin said. “That's the only way you pass things that require 60 votes in the Senate.”

Baldwin said that means both chambers should use the total spending level that received bipartisan backing in the Senate Appropriations Committee, not the lower spending level used by the House panel.