Congress Is Back This Week to Vote on Keeping the Government Open

The House of Representatives came back to work Monday, August 31, 2026, from its summer break for a one-week session. The top item on the agenda is a bill to keep the government funded past the midterm elections, according to NPR.

The House posted documents on its website for the week of August 31, 2026, showing the funding bill is set for a vote before members leave again.

Congress has to pass spending bills to keep federal agencies running. When lawmakers cannot agree on a full budget, they pass a short-term fix called a continuing resolution, or CR. A CR funds the government at current levels for a set period while lawmakers keep negotiating. This year, Congress has already passed two of these short-term fixes.

The House passed a temporary funding bill on July 22, 2026, to keep agencies running through December 4 and avoid a shutdown before the elections, Reuters reported. PBS NewsHour described the vote as a decision to act months early rather than wait until the last minute. The Senate passed its own version on August 8, 2026, according to Reuters.

The current round of funding talks follows a rough start to the budget year. A government shutdown began on October 1, 2025. A shutdown happens when funding runs out and federal agencies stop most operations. That shutdown ended when Congress passed H.R.5371, which funded most agencies through January 30, 2026, or until full-year spending bills became law, according to Congress.gov. H.R.5371 also included extra money for security for federal officials, per the Congress.gov summary.

Congress then passed a straightforward funding extension that kept the government running through January 30, 2026, along with nine full-year spending bills, the House Appropriations Committee said on November 12, 2025. After that, Congress passed the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026 (H.R.7148), which funded the Department of Homeland Security through February 13, 2026, per Congress.gov.

The House Appropriations Committee released the latest version of the funding bill on July 17, 2026. The committee called it a clean bill, meaning it does not include controversial add-ons designed to make it hard for the other party to support. It extends funding until December 4, the committee announced. The committee had released an earlier version on September 16, 2025, aimed at keeping the government open, the committee said at the time.

Other spending bills are also in play. S.2882 provides temporary funding for federal agencies and makes permanent an expanded tax credit that helps people pay for health insurance, according to Congress.gov. H.R.1968 provided further temporary funding for the budget year ending September 30, 2025, per Congress.gov.

The week ahead will show whether the House and Senate can agree on a single version of the funding bill before December 4, the current deadline. With the midterm elections in November, both parties want to avoid another shutdown. The October 2025 shutdown, which lasted until H.R.5371 became law, showed the costs of a lapse. Members returning for this one-week session have limited time to finish the next extension before they leave again to campaign.

The broader context here is that Congress has relied on short-term fixes instead of passing full budgets on time, and each temporary patch just pushes the harder decisions into the future. House leadership has scheduled the funding bill for a vote during the week of August 31. The Senate, which passed its version on August 8, would need to approve whatever the House sends over, or the two chambers would need to work out their differences. December 4 is the deadline under the most recent House-passed bill.