Republicans will enter the 119th Congress with a lot on their to-do list, and only a razor-thin majority to accomplish it with.
Confirming cabinet nominees. Dealing with the debt ceiling. Preparing tax cuts and border security legislation. Passing government spending for the upcoming fiscal year. Draining… the swamp? And — on top of all that — passing government spending for the current fiscal year, months after Congress was supposed to. Some ballots are still being counted, but it is clear GOP leaders will have almost no room for disagreement in the new year as they try to shepherd Donald Trump’s priorities through the House.
That’s why some Republicans would like to finish one of those tasks now rather than later. They argue wrapping up spending talks this month and passing government funding — instead of a stopgap appropriations bill that would kick the matter into the new year — would give members more bandwidth to work on their other priorities in the next Congress. It would be one less deadline to think about, at least.
“If I were the incoming president, I would want a clean slate and to be able to focus on fiscal year ’26,” Sen. Susan Collins, the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, told reporters Monday night. She pointed out that presidents are supposed to submit their budgetary priorities in February.
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“That’s what I would want to be concentrating on, and not finishing up the work of this fiscal year,” she said.
Other members of the spending panel are in the same boat. “I would very much like to do it right now,” Sen. John Boozman, an Arkansas Republican who sits on the committee, told NOTUS of government funding.
He ticked through his own mental to-do list for when members meet in January: confirming nominees, assigning committee spots to new members, addressing the debt ceiling, hammering out a reconciliation package to pass GOP agenda items through the Senate with a simple majority — “which is very difficult to do,” he noted — and passing next year’s government funding.
“We ought to get it done right now,” Boozman said.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma would also prefer some certainty instead of risking a shutdown soon after Trump enters office.
“Playing a what-if game of what happens in March — I don’t know,” he said. “I’d prefer not to do that.”
Either way, Mullin told NOTUS, Trump’s priorities would be at the front of Republicans’ minds: “Whatever we decide to do, President Trump will have a role in it, to some degree, because it’ll be his priorities that we’re going to have to deal with when he comes into office.”
Lawmakers are running out of time to finish their work, with a Dec. 20 funding deadline approaching. Members said they hope to iron out the details this week. Other Republicans, however, told NOTUS they want to punt on the issue to give Trump more of a say in spending priorities.
“The president wants to weigh in on the budget,” said Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana. “I can’t much blame him.”
Kennedy, another member of the Appropriations Committee, said he expects a potential stopgap spending package would go through March, although such a deal hasn’t been finalized yet.
Is he concerned at all that a shutdown deadline in the spring could bog down Trump’s first 100 days, as some of his colleagues fear?
“I’m not worried about it. I’m looking forward to it,” he told NOTUS. “It’s about time we actually tried to get something done. There have been times in this Congress where I just felt like the bar can’t get any lower. I realize this stuff takes time, but sometimes it takes us a whole year to get nothing done.”
“You’re going to see a lot of activity in the first six months,” he said.
Sen. Thom Tillis isn’t worried either. He said he just wants to pass a stopgap bill with disaster relief attached to help constituents in his home state of North Carolina who were harmed by Hurricane Helene earlier this year. Lawmakers can always figure out the legislative calendar next year, Tillis said.
“We always have a lot on the to-do list,” he told NOTUS. “If you’re intellectually honest, we’re always worried about the funding window.”
Others have pointed to Trump as a kind of talisman who will ward off infighting during those busy months. Rep. Tim Burchett said in an interview before the House left for Thanksgiving that “the unity that surrounds Donald J. Trump” would help House Republicans focus enough to pass a spending bill with ambitious cuts, a reconciliation package and more in the next Congress.
“We’ve got a pretty good game plan,” he added. “I hope we take full advantage of this majority to make some real cuts.”
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Haley Byrd Wilt is a reporter at NOTUS. Emily Kennard is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
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