Where Congress Stands This Month
Congress is out of town. The Senate left Washington on September 30, the House is on its campaign recess, and most members are home asking for your vote before November 3. They left a big stack of unfinished work on the desk, though, and most of it comes due within weeks of their return.
The biggest item is money. The federal fiscal year started on October 1 without any of its 12 regular spending bills in place, so agencies are running on a temporary stopgap, a continuing resolution, that runs out on December 11. The defense policy bill, the farm bill, and the highway program are all stuck in the same traffic jam.
After the election, Congress returns for what is called a lame-duck session: members who lost or retired keep voting until the new 120th Congress is sworn in on January 3, 2027. Anything not finished by then has to start over as a new bill. Our midterm elections guide explains what is on the ballot in between.
Every item below has a status and a date. We check them against the official record every month, and sooner when something big happens, like a bill signing or a shutdown deadline. To see how a state legislature compares, our California legislature tracker covers what California passed this year.
Funding status from the Congressional Research Service and the White House; House and Senate floor action from Holland & Knight's October 2026 year-end deadlines review. January 3 is the date set by the Twentieth Amendment.
The Top Five Right Now
Open any item for what it does, how the vote went, what each side says, and what happens next.
Every year Congress is supposed to pass 12 appropriations bills that fund the federal government from October 1 through the next September 30. For fiscal year 2027, none has been enacted, so Congress passed H.R. 6500, the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2027, which keeps agencies funded through December 11, 2026, generally at the prior year's levels. It is one step in the yearly federal budget process.
The Senate passed the bill 90 to 6 on August 8, the House agreed to the Senate's version 370 to 48 on September 1, and the President signed it on September 2. Besides funding, it extends several programs to the same December 11 date, including the National Flood Insurance Program, federal highway and transit authority, and the 2015 law that lets companies share cyber threat information with the government. It also temporarily blocks the Office of Management and Budget from finalizing a proposed rule on how federal grants are reviewed.
Of the 12 full-year bills, the House has passed three (Agriculture, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and National Security and State), and the Senate has passed none, according to Holland & Knight's October review. The stopgap was bipartisan, but the full-year bills still divide the parties over spending levels.
By December 11, Congress has three choices: pass the full-year bills (often bundled into one large package), pass another stopgap, or let funding lapse, which causes a shutdown of agencies whose money runs out. Because the deadline falls after the election, it lands in a short lame-duck session.
The National Defense Authorization Act sets policy and authorizes spending for the Pentagon and other national security programs: troop pay raises, weapons programs, and military rules. Congress has enacted one every year for 65 consecutive years. Both the House and Senate versions authorize about $1.15 trillion in base national security spending, according to CrossGov's analysis.
The House passed H.R. 8800 on July 22 by 216 to 212, after a first attempt to bring it to the floor failed on June 30. Republicans voted 209 to 7 in favor and Democrats 6 to 205 against, according to the Congressional Research Service. Under the House's rules, the bill sent to the Senate also carries the SAVE Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote, a provision that ties it to the debate over voting rights.
In the Senate, the Armed Services Committee reported its own version, S. 4784, on June 15. On July 14, a vote to begin debate failed 50 to 46, short of the 60 votes needed to end a filibuster. The Majority Leader entered a motion to reconsider, which allows another vote later, but the bill has not moved since.
Senator Mike Rounds (R-South Dakota), a member of the Armed Services Committee, said, "I think the NDAA will come together after the election." A late NDAA is not unusual: since 1977, the bill has been signed on average about 45 days into the fiscal year, according to CrossGov.
The farm bill is a roughly five-year law that covers crop and dairy supports, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), conservation, and rural development, most of it run by the Department of Agriculture. The 2018 farm bill, extended through September 30, 2026, has now lapsed. Most programs keep running for now, but commodity and dairy supports end December 31, after which the department would have to fall back on permanent farm laws from 1938 and 1949, which could sharply raise the cost of milk price supports.
The House passed H.R. 7567, the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026, by 224 to 200 on April 30, with 14 Democrats voting yes. It would extend farm programs through 2031. During debate, the House adopted an amendment by Representative Anna Paulina Luna (R-Florida) that removed provisions that would have overridden state pesticide labeling laws.
In the Senate, the Agriculture Committee approved the Agricultural Act of 2026, S. 5526, by a party-line 12 to 11 vote on September 16. It still needs 60 votes on the Senate floor. The main dispute is over a 2025 law that shifts part of SNAP's cost to the states: Democrats want to delay that shift by two years, and the option under discussion delays it by one, according to Holland & Knight.
Enrollment for the two main crop support programs runs through December 11. In the lame-duck session, Congress can pass a new farm bill, pass another extension, or let more programs lapse into the new year.
Federal highway, bridge, and transit programs are set by a multi-year surface transportation law, administered by the Department of Transportation. The current one, the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, expired on September 30, 2026. The stopgap funding law extended it to December 11, but without the extra advance funding the 2021 law provided, according to Holland & Knight.
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved H.R. 8870, the BUILD America 250 Act, by 62 to 2 on May 22, 2026, after a 14-hour markup. It would provide about $580 billion over five years (fiscal 2027 to 2031): about $474.4 billion from the Highway Trust Fund and $106 billion subject to yearly appropriations. As of October, it had not reached the House floor.
The bill would charge a yearly federal registration fee of $130 for electric vehicles and $35 for plug-in hybrids to help fund the Highway Trust Fund, which has relied mostly on gas and diesel taxes since the Interstate Highway System was created. It also sets the first federal rules for self-driving trucks and adds the Railway Safety Act of 2026. The American Public Transportation Association backed parts of it but raised concerns about a proposed block grant program and new limits on federal help buying buses.
In the Senate, no bill text has been released and no committee has voted, according to Holland & Knight. Three committees share the job (Environment and Public Works, Banking, and Commerce), and the Finance Committee has not yet addressed how to pay for it. Congress has to pass the new law or another extension by December 11.
A group of health programs, often called "extenders," expires on December 31, 2026. They include the mandatory Community Health Center Fund, which provides about 70 percent of federal grant money for community health centers, the National Health Service Corps, the Special Diabetes Programs, a temporary 2.5 percent increase in what Medicare pays doctors, and two programs that support small rural hospitals. Most are overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services.
Some related programs were already extended further. The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026, extended Medicare's telehealth flexibilities through December 31, 2027, and the Acute Hospital Care at Home program runs through September 30, 2030. Funding for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) also runs through December 31, 2026, according to Holland & Knight.
The enhanced Affordable Care Act premium tax credits, which expired at the end of 2025, remain unresolved, and restoring them would take a broader political agreement, according to Holland & Knight. The House Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees have each approved separate bipartisan bills extending other expiring tax provisions, such as the Work Opportunity Tax Credit.
Extenders like these are usually renewed in a year-end package, often alongside the spending bills. In the meantime, the Health Resources and Services Administration has said health centers whose grant periods end around December 2026 or January 2027 will have their funds extended through June 30, 2027.
How We Pick the Five
- We rank items by how many people they reach and how much money they move: budgets, taxes, and laws that change daily life come first.
- A bill that became law, was vetoed, or was sent to voters outranks one still waiting in committee, because its outcome is settled.
- Hard deadlines count: a program about to expire makes the list even if no single bill has moved yet.
- We do not pick by party or by cause. Every summary of what supporters and opponents say is attributed to them, and every vote count and date comes from the official record.
- For Congress, items with a hard deadline in the next three months rank above bills that have no deadline, because those are the ones Congress must act on.
Every status checked against official sources on October 12, 2026. Next scheduled review: November 2026.
Sources & Further Reading
- White House: H.R. 6500 Signed into Law (September 2, 2026)
- Congress.gov: H.R. 6500, Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2027
- U.S. Senate: Roll Call Vote 228 (H.R. 6500)
- Congressional Research Service: Overview of Continuing Appropriations for FY2027
- Congress.gov: H.R. 8800, FY2027 NDAA
- Congressional Research Service: FY2027 NDAA, Status of Legislative Activity
- Congress.gov: H.R. 7567, Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026
- Congress.gov: S. 5526, Agricultural Act of 2026
- Congress.gov: H.R. 8870, BUILD America 250 Act
- Holland & Knight: Congress Faces Converging Year-End Deadlines (October 2026)
- CrossGov: Congress Faces a December 11 Cliff
- National Association of Community Health Centers: Health Center Funding
Bill numbers, votes, and enactment dates come from Congress.gov, Senate.gov, the White House, and the Congressional Research Service. Floor status and deadlines come from the year-end reviews listed, which are named in the text where used. Every status checked against official sources on October 12, 2026.