We wrote Wednesday that there’s a chance the federal government could shut down sometime this fall.
Today is a good example of why.
The Senate Appropriations Committee often passes each of its 12 annual spending bills on a bipartisan basis. This is what makes the Senate the Senate — and not the House.
Yet the Senate Appropriations panel has its first FY2026 markup this morning, and senators still don’t have a deal on what they want to spend this year. There’s also no sense that they’ll be able to reach one.
It gets worse.
The two sides appear to have a tacit agreement on two bills – Agriculture and Legislative Branch – to spend slightly more than FY2025. This puts the Senate at odds with House Republicans and the White House, which are seeking tens of billions of dollars in cuts to non-defense discretionary spending, aka social programs.
However, a third bill — Commerce-Justice-Science — has become a partisan battleground over one of President Donald Trump’s longstanding targets: the FBI.
The Trump administration has decided to move the FBI out of its decrepit Pennsylvania Ave. headquarters and into the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center near the White House. Administration officials will divert $555 million already approved by Congress to help pay for the move, and they’re not asking for permission from lawmakers to make this dramatic shift.
The problem here is the Maryland congressional delegation won a contentious bidding process back in 2023 to build a new, multi-billion dollar FBI campus in Greenbelt, Md. This was going to bring lots of money and jobs to Prince George’s County.
Faced with this threat from the White House, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), the top Democrat on CJS, made the unusual demand on Wednesday to have his subcommittee mark up the bill – a small declaration of war on the usually bipartisan panel.
If CJS doesn’t advance through the committee on a bipartisan basis, that doesn’t bode well for the more complex spending bills, such as Labor-HHS and THUD.
“We’re the test case, and I hope it goes well,” said Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), a member of the Appropriations Committee. “That’ll expedite the others if it does.”
FBI trouble. The problems began surfacing Wednesday night. Van Hollen said he’d offer an amendment at today’s hearing to ensure that the FBI headquarters can only be built in Maryland.
Despite Trump’s preferences, Van Hollen said the administration’s FBI HQ move contradicted a “longstanding position” of the Appropriations Committee. Failing to include language protecting the FBI project would set a bad precedent for future administrations, Van Hollen insisted.
“This is a bigger issue than just the FBI building,” Van Hollen said. “I do think this goes to the prerogatives of the committee, because it’s the FBI building today. It could be any other project tomorrow.”
If the panel doesn’t approve his amendment, Van Hollen will oppose the CJS bill and try to kill it on the Senate floor. Van Hollen said that he doesn’t think the bill can get 60 votes without his FBI language.
Otherwise, Van Hollen said he’s supportive of the CJS bill. The legislation provides a total of $79.7 billion in funding, a slight boost over FY2025 levels, CJS Chair Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) noted.
Jeffrey Epstein exclusive. Van Hollen has another amendment he plans to offer today, this one related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, that will also be worth watching.
While MAGA world melts down over an alleged Epstein coverup – this time by the Trump administration – Van Hollen has an amendment calling on Attorney General Pam Bondi to “retain, preserve, and compile any records or evidence related to any investigation, prosecution, or incarceration of Jeffrey Epstein” and then provide a report to the CJS panel within 60 days of enactment of the bill.
Van Hollen’s amendment calls for information on the “investigation of co-conspirators, internal reviews and misconduct findings by the Department of Justice, the current status of investigations into the financial and trafficking networks of Jeffrey Epstein, an intelligence assessment of Jeffrey Epstein’s financial ties, clients, and connections (if any) to the United States Government or foreign governments, and oversight failures at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York, New York.”
Epstein committed suicide at that jail back in August 2019, although conspiracy theories are rampant over his death and secret “client list.” DOJ recently reported that Epstein committed suicide and no client list exists.
Rescissions rage. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other top Democrats have repeatedly warned that the outlook for this year’s spending process hinges on whether Republicans pass Trump’s $9.4 billion rescissions package next week.
“It depends on whether the Republicans want to pass a bunch of rescissions,” Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.), the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said Wednesday when asked whether the two sides can reach agreement.
We scooped that Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) warned her colleagues during a party lunch that she wants changes to the rescissions package, especially on PEPFAR, the George W. Bush-era HIV/AIDS prevention program.
Collins reiterated her position during a Wednesday night interview on the Christian Broadcasting Network: “Cutting this program will literally cost lives, and that’s why I’ve made it very clear that I will not support the hundreds of millions of dollars that the OMB has proposed.”
But even those changes won’t make the rescissions package acceptable to Democrats, who see this as part of a broader challenge by the Trump administration to Congress’ power of the purse. They’re also very critical – especially in the House – of GOP leaders’ failure to defend that prerogative against the Trump onslaught.
