If there is ever a quiet week in Washington, D.C., it’s the week before Labor Day. Federal lawmakers have been back in their states and districts for the last month. Their staff have fled to the beach or elsewhere, trying to get a few moments of peace before the hustle and bustle of September begins.
What will be on the agenda once lawmakers and their teams reassemble inside the Beltway next month?
Let’s take a look.
September is for Spending
At the top of Congress’s September agenda are the 12 fiscal year (FY) 2026 spending bills.
While not one of these pieces of legislation has made it to President Donald Trump’s desk for his signature yet, the U.S. House and Senate have advanced their respective versions of several of the bills. (As a reminder, before a bill can be sent to the president for his signature or veto, each chamber must consider and approve the bill. If there are differences between the two chambers’ versions of the bill, lawmakers must meet to hash out the differences, and the resulting “conference bill” must then be approved again by both the Senate and House.)
House lawmakers have approved their versions of nine of the 12 spending bills. Senators have approved eight.
While that record may be slightly better than it has been in past years, lawmakers are still unlikely to meet the Sept. 30 deadline for approving the dozen FY 2026 spending bills. To keep the federal government from shutting down, they have two options.
First, they could approve a full-year omnibus spending bill, which is a single measure that would combine multiple appropriations bills into one. An omnibus could be comprised of all 12 spending bills, or it could be just a few. For instance, Republican leaders could decide to combine funding for agencies like the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the legislative branch — which funds congressional operations — and not deal with any of the others. In this instance, the funded departments would remain open the others would shutter until both chambers and the president approved the spending bills related to those agencies.
A second option is a continuing resolution (CR), a (normally) temporary funding measure passed by Congress to keep the federal government operating when the annual appropriations bills have not been enacted by the start of the new fiscal year on Oct. 1. Essentially, as the Peterson Foundation has explained, CRs are “stopgap” measures that prevent a government shutdown while lawmakers continue negotiating and finalizing the regular appropriations bill.
While CRs generally last only a few weeks or months, there is nothing preventing Congress from approving a full-year CR, which would provide funding for federal agencies through FY 2026 at current levels.
Some Republicans have already floated the idea of a full-year CR. According to The Hill, House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.), said, “I have no problem with yearlong CR. It keeps spending at current levels, it doesn’t increase spending … Just get it all over with. Just do a full-year CR, and I personally think that you could put the community project funded projects in it. We could do that if we had to.”
Rep. Harris’s comments are significant for two reasons: first, the Freedom Caucus generally has opposed combining the end-of-year spending bills or using CRs to keep the federal government in business. Second, the fiscal conservative acknowledged Republicans may need to insert “community project” funding in the bill. These are special appropriations requested by individual members of Congress — in other words, they type of “pork barrel projects” anti-spending advocates oppose. (You may be more familiar with the traditional term used for such items: earmarks.) If Republican leaders decide to move forward with a CR, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) may not run into the type of opposition he, and previous GOP speakers, have run into at appropriations time.
A Threat to Mortgage Markets?
Sept. 30 is significant for at least one other reason: authorization of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) expires.
The NFIP is a federal program, managed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), that provides flood insurance to property owners, renters, and businesses in participating communities. It aims to reduce the impact of flooding on individuals and communities by offering affordable insurance and encouraging communities to adopt floodplain management regulations.
If NFIP expires, FEMA will stop selling and renewing flood insurance policies. Existing policies will remain in effect until their expiration date, and claims will still be paid if FEMA has sufficient funds, but new policies and renewals will not be available until the program is reauthorized. As FEMA has explained, expiration could significantly impact the real estate market because lenders often require flood insurance for properties in high-risk areas.
Needless to say, even if most Americans are still covered, the optics of letting the NFIP expire during hurricane season are less than optimal.
Senate May Consider Key Nominations
Given that the Republican-held Senate did not make as much progress as President Trump would have liked regarding executive and judicial branch nominations, that issue also will be on the upper chamber’s to-do list this fall.
One nominee who is sure to draw quite a bit of attention is Stephen Miran, President Trump’s choice to fill the vacant spot on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors — and perhaps to succeed Jerome Powell as chair. As chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, Miran is one of the key architects of the White House’s trade and tariff policy.
As a Wall Street Journal editorial earlier this month noted, he also holds some controversial views. “President Trump likes to stir things up, and he’s done it again with his choice of Stephen Miran to fill an open seat on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors,” The Journal editorialists opined. “We can’t recall when a president nominated to the Fed someone whose abiding policy conviction is to weaken the U.S. dollar. … [Miran’s] solution? Manage a decline in the dollar’s value over time by reducing the global demand for the U.S. currency, or at least mitigate the effects of its overvaluation.”
The writers concluded U.S. senators should “do the country a favor” by thoroughly investigating Miran’s thoughts on dollar devaluation.
In a statement after President Trump announced Miran’s nomination, U.S. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott (R-S.C.) praised Miran and said he looks forward to “quickly considering” his nomination. How quickly remains to be seen, and recent past precedent does not provide much of a guide. According to the Congressional Research Service, it took the Senate anywhere from two months to 11 months to confirm the current members of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors.
As we mentioned in a separate piece earlier this month, senators also may consider changes to the rules surrounding nominations. Options include eliminating procedural votes on nominees; shortening debate time on the Senate floor; voting on nominees en bloc (packaging several, even dozens, of nominees together); and shortening the list of executive branch positions that require Senate confirmation.
Over the August recess, The Hill explained how these rule changes could stall all other work on Capitol Hill.
“Under regular order, Senate rule changes require 67 votes. But Republicans could use a shortcut that requires only 51 votes, giving them the ability to bypass Democratic opposition,” The Hill noted. “That rarely used shortcut, which more and more Republicans are floating, is known as the ‘nuclear option’ because it is viewed as a major escalation of partisanship. Going that route could have major ramifications for Senate work coming down the rails, and not just on nominations.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) pledged to oppose the rules change and signaled he would make it an issue in next year’s midterm elections. “The Trump-Republican ‘go-it-alone’ strategy ain’t working, and the American people aren’t happy,” he said.
Rest up. Congress is about to come back to Washington.