Congress is facing a fast approaching deadline of this Friday, March 14, to pass a year-long continuing resolution (CR) to fund the federal government and avert a government shutdown.

Over the weekend, Congressional Republicans released the text of their proposed CR. It would extend funding authority till September 30, the end of Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25), and would fund the majority of the Federal Government at FY24 levels. But this is not a clean CR, as it contains a number of funding modifications. At a high level it would increase defense spending by about $6 billion over current levels, while non-defense funding would be cut by about $13 billion.

However, the impact of those changes is highly variable when getting into the weeds of the budgets. For example, the RDT&E accounts within the Department of Defense (DOD), where much of the research funding is housed, would see a general 5 percent cut; that will eventually trickle down to the DOD research accounts. There is also included language giving DOD authority to start new initiatives and move around funding. As another example, NIST STRS will receive a cut of $223 million from its approved FY24 levels. However, the earmarks that are included in NIST’s FY24 budget are being stripped out, freeing up those obligations and which may soften some of that cut. Other than that, the legislation appears to continue funding for much of the federal research agencies at FY24 approved levels; the budgets for the National Science Foundation and DOE Office of Science are not called out for specific changes.

Several factors have contributed to the need for a year-long CR. As we have discussed before, the unity of Congressional Republicans is constantly in doubt. Fiscal conservatives, who are interested in major cuts to Federal funding, are in conflict with more moderate members of the Republican caucus who want to see a more thoughtful approach to funding federal operations. The situation is further complicated by President Trump’s efforts to radically downsize the Federal Government and its workforce. Congressional Democrats would normally be able to step in and offer votes for a clean CR which didn’t have extraneous policy riders or changes. But Democrats want a binding promise that the President won’t violate any legally passed budget; Congressional Republicans are unwilling to go against a major priority of the Trump Administration and provide such an assurance.

Given that we are now three-fourths of the way through FY25, and the FY2026 budget process hasn’t started yet, Republican leaders in Congress felt a year-long CR was the only solution. While such a CR has been an outcome the science policy community has long feared, as we typically tell policymakers that such a budgetary move could cause serious problems to the nation’s research efforts, the situation this year is markedly different. There are serious efforts in Congress that are advocating for major cuts to nondefense spending, which is the broad category of federal spending which research funding is included in. Those championing such efforts are pushing to enact cuts in the range of 20-30 percent, possibly more, and they would prefer to start with the FY25 budget. In such a situation, flat funding is preferable.

The House of Representatives is voting on the CR tonight; while it appears the voting will be very close, it is likely to pass (though that is not guaranteed). After that it heads to the Senate with an uncertain future. Because of the rules of how the chamber works, eight Senate Democrats will have to support it in procedural votes for the measure to advance. Given that such a large number of Democrats will have to cross over to support this, Republican leaders are attempting to apply political pressure by preemptively blaming the resulting government shutdown on Democrats. The final outcome is quite uncertain.

CRA is monitoring the situation closely and will report out any major developments; please check back for more updates.