House Passes Budget Bill, Ending Government Shutdown

Four days after funding for the Education Department and other federal agencies ran out, the House of Representatives voted 217 to 214 on a package of budget bills to reopen the government. The previous shutdown lasted 43 days.

The narrow vote means that most federal agencies now have budgets for fiscal year 2026, which began Oct. 1, 2025. Overall, Congress largely rejected the deep cuts that the Trump administration wanted to see. Instead of slashing the Education Department’s budget by $12 billion, the final legislation gives the agency level funding—-maintaining all of the programs that the administration initially zeroed out. Likewise, the National Institutes of Health will get an additional $400 million compared to the previous fiscal year. (The administration proposed cutting the agency’s budget by $18 billion.)

Funding for the agencies will run through Sept. 30—the end of the fiscal year.

Democrats in Congress say the full-year budget sets minimum staffing thresholds for agencies and won’t allow the Trump administration to “unilaterally defund programs to fund their own priorities—or to pick and choose what projects get funding.”