Sponsors (4)
The bill keeps essential federal services and key benefits running during funding gaps and improves budget scoring clarity, but it reduces near‑term pressure on Congress to finish appropriations and shifts some fiscal and administrative costs and scoring effects onto taxpayers and agencies.
Federal agencies (and thereby federal employees, state and local partners, and service recipients) can keep programs and services running during funding gaps by automatically continuing prior‑year funding in 14‑day increments.
Low‑income individuals (including SNAP recipients) continue to receive mandatory entitlement and nutrition benefits at current‑law levels during funding lapses, avoiding immediate benefit interruptions.
The bill preserves Congressional appropriations prerogatives and limits agency preemption by restricting large initial disbursements, limiting transfers, and requiring agencies to take only the minimal funding actions necessary during a lapse.
Automatic continuations reduce the political pressure on Congress to complete annual appropriations and could make shutdowns longer or more frequent, increasing fiscal and operational uncertainty for taxpayers and government partners.
Taxpayers may ultimately be charged for expenditures initially made under this authority if Congress later enacts appropriations that retroactively obligate or reclassify those costs.
Treating these continuations as discretionary could worsen near‑term deficit scores, potentially triggering enforcement actions or constraining other budget and policy choices.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Automatically continues prior-year funding in 14-day increments during appropriations lapses, with limits and special rules for entitlements and transfers.
Introduced September 15, 2025 by Ron Johnson · Last progress September 15, 2025
Creates an automatic continuing-appropriations mechanism that keeps federal programs running at prior-year funding levels during a lapse in annual appropriations. Funding is provided in automatic 14-calendar-day increments that renew while the lapse continues, with rules to preserve mandatory entitlement and nutrition programs, limit agency transfers, and restrict new starts and certain awards. Also requires scorekeeping and baseline rules so budget offices treat these automatic appropriations for budget enforcement and deficit-control purposes, and sets the statute to take effect September 30, 2025.