Government Reopened — Here’s What the House Just Passed (and What It Actually Does)

Today, February 3, 2026, the House passed the Senate-amended spending package that reopens the federal government and ends the four-day partial shutdown that began January 31. The final House vote was 217–214, and the bill now goes to President Trump, who has said he will sign it.

The important part isn’t the political drama. It’s the mechanics: what was funded, what wasn’t, what was extended, and what that means for agencies, states, territories, contractors, and communities trying to plan.

What the legislation is

The vehicle is H.R. 7148, the “Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026.”

This is not a single, clean “omnibus” as the public often imagines. It’s a stitched-together package that does two things at once:

1. Provides full-year FY2026 appropriations (through Sept. 30, 2026) for the remaining “big” bills that were still unfinished — including Defense; Labor–HHS–Education; Transportation–HUD; Financial Services & General Government; and National Security/State.
2. Buys time on Homeland Security — by inserting a short continuing resolution (CR) extension for DHS through February 13, 2026, rather than finalizing full-year DHS funding today.

That “DHS punt” is the entire reason there was a shutdown in the first place: the broader government funding agreement was in place, but DHS policy and oversight requirements tied to immigration enforcement became the sticking point.

The key technical changes the Senate made (and the House accepted today)

Congress.gov’s text shows exactly what the Senate changed when it amended H.R. 7148.

The Senate inserted Division H — the “Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2026,” which does four critical budget-law things:

• Extends the date in the existing Continuing Appropriations Act to February 13, 2026 (this is what keeps DHS operating while negotiations continue).
• Acknowledges the lapse window (the shutdown period that began “on or about January 31, 2026”) for legal clarity.
• Ensures pay and benefits can be paid consistent with shutdown/backpay requirements.
• Ratifies obligations incurred to protect life and property and to conduct an orderly shutdown — a standard legal “cleanup” move that reduces exposure for agencies that had to make real-time calls during the lapse.
• Federal employees face delayed paychecks (even if back pay comes later).
• Contractors often don’t get the same automatic backpay protections.
• Grant and procurement timelines slip, and program offices fall behind on reviews and awards.
• States, localities, and territories trying to align federal dollars with capital projects lose time — and in infrastructure, time is money.

That last point is the kind of thing most headlines ignore, but it matters. When appropriations lapse, agencies don’t stop needing cybersecurity protection, air traffic safety, facility security, or emergency response. Congress routinely uses “ratification” language after a lapse to reduce uncertainty around essential obligations.

What does “reopen the government” mean in practice

A shutdown is not a monolith. Even during a lapse, many functions continue under exceptions (life and property, funded by fees, funded by other laws, and other limited categories). The pain shows up quickly, though:

This bill stops the bleeding for most of the government through September 30.
But it also sets up a second deadline — February 13 — for DHS.

Why funding DHS only through Feb. 13 is a big deal

From a budget execution standpoint, short-term CRs are the opposite of good governance. They create two predictable problems:

1. Operational churn: DHS components (including FEMA, CBP, TSA, Coast Guard, etc.) manage hiring, procurement, and deployments on a short fuse.
2. Policy leverage: CR deadlines become negotiating leverage points, which encourages “hostage”-style policymaking.

That said, Congress did something important here: it de-linked the broader federal government from the DHS impasse. In other words, it didn’t let one unresolved policy fight hold the entire appropriations process hostage.

That’s a meaningful improvement over past shutdown dynamics — and it’s exactly the kind of structural decision that keeps the country functioning while elected officials argue out real disagreements.

The dollars: what we know from credible budget trackers

Multiple budget trackers describe the package as roughly $1.2 trillion in spending authority covering the remaining full-year bills, with DHS's temporary extension.

Also worth noting: by the time this passed, six FY2026 appropriations bills were already enacted earlier in the cycle (including Commerce–Justice–Science; Energy–Water; Interior–Environment; Agriculture; MilCon–VA; and Legislative Branch).
Today’s vote largely completes the job—11 of 12 bills are complete —and isolates the final DHS debate.

What about earmarks — congressionally directed spending/community project funding?

Yes — community project funding (CPF) / congressionally directed spending (CDS) is part of modern appropriations, and it’s in these bills.

The most important detail is how it’s done: in the appropriations text, funding for designated projects is commonly tied to tables in the explanatory statement (the joint statement that accompanies the bill). Senate Appropriations materials explicitly describe this structure — that specified amounts for community project funding/congressionally directed spending are provided “in the table titled ‘Community Project Funding/Congressionally Directed Spending’ in the explanatory statement described in section 4” of the consolidated act.

That mechanism matters because it creates a paper trail:

• a named recipient,
• a stated purpose,
• a defined location,
• a specific amount,
• and (typically) member certifications and disclosure requirements.

In plain English: transparent earmarks are better than invisible earmarks. If Congress is going to direct spending (and it always has, one way or another), it’s better done in daylight with documentation than through opaque agency maneuvering behind closed doors.

What we don’t yet have in a single digestible public headline is a clean “topline list” of every CPF/CDS project embedded across every division of this package. Those projects live in the explanatory statement tables and committee-linked databases. The right way to evaluate them is not by vibes, but by answers to three questions:

1. Is the project lawful and eligible under committee rules?
2. Is there a local match/skin in the game and a credible delivery capacity?
3. Does it align with core public purposes (infrastructure, safety, resilience, workforce), rather than serving narrow political vanity?

That’s the standard we use when we help communities responsibly pursue federal resources.

The bigger takeaway: budgeting is policy — and process is power

Here’s the honest lesson from February 3:

• When appropriations slip, Congress loses leverage, and the executive branch gains it through contingency operations and administrative workarounds.
• When appropriations finish on time, communities can plan — and the public can hold decision-makers accountable for priorities and tradeoffs.

Getting 11 of 12 bills done—even with an unresolved DHS dispute—is not perfection. But it’s closer to governing than the alternative.

And now we have a very clear next checkpoint: February 13, 2026, when DHS funding becomes the live wire again.