COLUMN: The Senate Reined in Trump, but Did Not Regain Control Over Appropriations

The number that looks like a dam

89 to 4. On August 3, the U.S. Senate voted almost unanimously to move forward with a temporary funding resolution. In a capital that has grown accustomed to turning every deadline into a threat, this majority was as clear as a rejection.

A procedural vote, not a final victory

We must describe exactly what happened. Senators invoked a cloture vote on the motion to proceed to consideration of H.R. 6500. This was neither an enactment nor even the final vote. It was the first step—taken by a vote of 89 to 4—toward a bill that would keep the bulk of the federal government funded at 2026 levels through December 11.

This clarification does not diminish the significance of the action. It restores its true weight. Only four elected officials refused to move forward: Elizabeth Warren, Tim Kaine, Bernie Sanders, and Rand Paul. A massive coalition thus formed around a modest, almost basic idea: the government should not be plunged into darkness to serve the purposes of a political standoff.

The Provisional as a Language of Courage

But the word remains: temporary. The measure did not settle any annual budget. It did not fix any institution. It bought time and, in that time, imposed two limits on the Trump administration: no additional funding transfers to the Border Patrol, and no immediate implementation of an Office of Management and Budget rule that would expand political control over federal grants.

The Senate did not retake the fortress. It prevented the locks from being changed overnight.

The Update Required by the First Vote

August 8: A More Daunting Step

The matter did not remain frozen as of August 3. Five days later, the Senate adopted its version of the resolution by a vote of 90 to 6. The official record on Congress.gov indicates adoption on August 8, followed by the transmission to the House on August 10 of a message regarding the Senate’s action. The status remains “passed by the Senate,” not “become law.”

This sequence changes the verb. The Senate has not merely moved on to consideration: it has sent a complete compromise bill to the other chamber. The levee has advanced. It has not yet reached the other bank.

A House Called Upon to Revote

The House had already passed its own bill, by a vote of 220 to 205, on July 21. Its deadline was December 4, one week earlier. Most importantly, its version did not include the same limits on grants or the same closure of the pathway allowing funds to be redirected to immigration agencies.

Two chambers. Two bills. The same stated desire to avoid gridlock, but two different views on the executive branch’s role in the budget process. Representatives must either accept the Senate’s bill, amend it, or reopen negotiations. Until that choice is made, the relief is political, not legal.

A majority can be overwhelming and yet remain hanging in the balance.

December 11 Is Not a Solution

Time bought at the cost of the next showdown

The proposed funding runs until the earlier of two events: December 11, 2026, or the passage of the applicable appropriations bills. This formula may seem technical. Yet it governs the operation of entire programs. WIC, the disaster relief fund, Small Business Administration loans, the Indian Health Service, wildfire suppression, and several expiring authorities depend on the continuity established in this way.

The bill does not allocate new funding. Above all, it maintains the levels from the previous fiscal year, with targeted adjustments. That is the purpose of a continuing resolution: to prevent the absence of twelve annual appropriations bills from turning a congressional impasse into an administrative shutdown.

December is already looming

The measure pushes back the edge of the cliff. It does not bridge the gap. On August 12, the Conference Board noted that the House had passed only three of the twelve appropriations bills for 2027 and that the Senate had passed none. After the midterm elections, it will therefore be necessary to finish the job or pass another stopgap measure.

December 11 does not mean budgetary peace. It’s another date circled on the calendar—after the elections, before the next Congress is sworn in—when responsibilities become easier to diffuse.

Washington has pushed back the deadline. The deadline itself, however, has not disappeared.

The real battle lies in a rule

When a grant changes its nature

At the heart of the compromise lies a document that few citizens will read: the OMB’s proposed regulation on federal financial assistance. Its opponents say it would give policymakers more power to approve or cancel grants based on their alignment with the administration’s priorities. Republican Senator Susan Collins opposed it. Democrats have described it in much harsher terms.

The Senate resolution would prevent this rule from taking effect while the stopgap funding is in place. Congress.gov confirms the temporary ban on implementing regulations that revise guidelines for federal financial assistance.

A victory with an expiration date

Rosa DeLauro states that the OMB has received approximately 500,000 comments and that the text requires it to continue reviewing them. Patty Murray argues that the rule would systematically politicize funding. These are their assessments, not a court ruling. The more concrete fact stands apart from them: Congress has inserted a pause into the mechanism.

A federal grant funds research, housing, local aid, and infrastructure. If its future depends more on the recipient’s political alignment, the budget ceases to be merely a tool of government. It becomes an instrument of compliance.

The most effective power does not always prohibit. It chooses who will be allowed to continue.

Here, Congress is defending its very reason for being

Article I as a bulwark against the temptation of presidential discretion

The Constitution entrusts Congress with budgetary authority. In modern practice, elected officials vote on appropriations, agencies administer them, and the executive branch has immense discretion in implementation. The dispute arises when this discretion begins to resemble a right to rewrite the will of Congress after the vote.

The OMB rule crystallizes this fear. Elected officials are not merely challenging a Trump policy. They are defending the distinction between implementing an appropriation and subjecting it to a second vote—this time within the presidential apparatus—based on more political criteria.

The Budget as an Institutional Boundary

A Congress that appropriates funds but leaves it to the executive branch to freely decide which recipients are sufficiently compliant no longer fully controls the purse strings. It retains the handle, not the contents. That is why the temporary freeze transcends partisan dispute. Republican Senator Susan Collins presented it as a necessary safeguard against a deeply flawed rule. Democrats see it as a power grab.

I do not attribute any purity to the Senate. I observe something rarer: for a few days, elected officials from both parties understood that ceding budgetary power to a president they like today is also ceding it to the one they will fear tomorrow.

An institution sometimes saves itself out of self-interest. It saves itself nonetheless.

The Border Patrol, or the Budget That Travels

A Loophole Closed

The House version did not guarantee that funds could not be redirected to the Border Patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement. According to Patty Murray, the Senate version closes a loophole that would have allowed the administration to transfer funds allocated to other programs to the Border Patrol. The New York Times also describes a ban on reallocation.

Politico reports a broader wording: no new funding for ICE and the Border Patrol during the period. The Conference Board echoes this interpretation, noting that more than $70 billion has already been approved for these agencies through 2029. The common thread among these accounts is clear: the Senate bill strips the executive branch of additional flexibility.

Money is never abstract

A budget transfer involves two actions. One agency receives funds. Another loses the ability to use the appropriated funds as originally voted. When this process occurs outside the realm of public debate, political priorities shift without a new choice being accounted for before the voters.

The conflict, therefore, is not just about the border. It is about the right to reallocate funds that have already been promised, to quietly eliminate one priority in order to inflate another, and then to present the result as mere management.

A federal dollar does not disappear when it is transferred. Its promise, however, does.

Trump supports the bill that limits him

The contradiction is only apparent

The White House has announced its support for the Senate amendment. It describes it as a clean, short-term resolution, funding agencies at current levels through December 11. If the bill reaches the president in this form, his advisors recommend that he sign it.

One might see this as Trump backing down in the face of the Senate. That would be jumping to conclusions. The bill also includes adjustments and authorizations requested by the administration for veterans, housing, nutrition, and other obligations. Above all, a government shutdown before the elections would come at a political cost to all Republicans in power.

Accepting a Limit to Avoid a Disaster

A president can support a bill that suspends one of his rules if he deems the rest more important. This is, in fact, how compromise normally works. The White House’s support reduces the risk of a veto if the House accepts the bill. It does not transform the administration into a champion of congressional oversight.

The lesson is not that Trump was defeated. It is more precise: a broad enough coalition can make the cost of refusal greater than the price of a concession, even for a president who prefers to govern with a free hand.

Those in power rarely back down out of a change of heart. They back down when moving forward costs more.

Programs operate far removed from political squabbles

WIC, disasters, health, housing

Press releases refer to “anomalies.” The term is unflattering. It describes adjustments that prevent the automatic carryover of appropriations from disrupting programs whose needs are not static. The resolution mentions WIC, the Disaster Relief Fund, housing programs, the Indian Health Service, healthcare, and veterans’ benefits.

For the administration, these are obligations. For the committees, they are budget lines. For the people who depend on these programs, continuity is far from a constitutional abstraction. It determines whether a benefit, nutritional assistance, emergency aid, or a funded service can continue without interruption.

The Incomes of Federal Employees Behind the Word “Shutdown”

The White House itself states that a shutdown forces federal employees to work or wait without pay. Susan Collins refers to essential programs and the employees affected. There’s no need to invent a family or a scenario to understand this. A suspended paycheck is already a concrete enough consequence.

Politicians love the drama of a shutdown because the word itself is so dramatic. The reality is more mundane, more repetitive: delayed operations, employees caught up in a decision they didn’t vote for, and services piling up work while elected officials count political points.

The paralysis becomes spectacular in Washington. Its cost comes in small cuts elsewhere.

After two shutdowns, memories resurface

The recent past has left a bill

Congress does not act in a vacuum. The New York Times and the Conference Board point to two funding disruptions during the previous fiscal year—one general, the other partial. These involved health care subsidies and restrictions on immigration operations. Their political details differ, but their mechanics are identical: an unresolved disagreement leads to a government shutdown.

The 90-to-6 vote is much broader than the coalitions that ended those crises. This does not prove that lawmakers have become wiser. It shows that they now understand the cost of a repeat scenario ahead of the elections.

Fatigue as a Bipartisan Force

There are majorities born of conviction and majorities born of exhaustion. This one likely embodies both. Republicans want to prevent a government they control from shutting down. Democrats secure restrictions on the OMB and immigration. Everyone can return in August claiming they averted disaster.

This compromise is not a reconciliation. It’s a truce born of the memory of the damage. We’d like to see institutions learn their lessons before the system crashes. Political America often learns after the fact, then forgets just before the next one.

Institutional memory sometimes lasts until the next campaign. No longer than that.

A rare majority guarantees nothing

A 90-to-6 vote does not bind the House

The American system was designed to make agreement difficult. A massive majority in the Senate does not dictate to the House. Representatives already have their own bill, their own timeline, and their own red lines. Politico cites Republicans for whom the provision on ICE and the Border Patrol could be a deal-breaker.

The House returns at the end of August. It will then have about a month before the start of fiscal year 2027. The timeframe only seems long because Washington still measures deadlines in weeks. When amendments, votes, inter-chamber communications, and the president’s signature all need to align, September quickly shrinks.

The center may win a vote but lose the timeline

The Senate coalition is exerting moral and political pressure: causing a government shutdown after such a lopsided vote would be difficult to explain. But the House can demand changes. Every change sends the bill back to the Senate. The power of procedure lies precisely in these back-and-forth exchanges.

The danger isn’t just that a majority might reject the solution. It’s that a blocking minority could use up the time needed to make it a reality, then blame the clock for having decided the matter.

In a budget, waiting is already a decision.

The Democrats have won a reprieve, not the principle

To call this a triumph would be a misreading of the situation

Patty Murray and Rosa DeLauro are touting the limits imposed on the OMB and on funding transfers to the Border Patrol. They are right to say that the Senate’s version is closer to their demands than the House’s. They would be wrong to view this as lasting protection.

The freeze on the OMB rule expires with the resolution. The prohibition does not withdraw the proposal. It does not permanently rewrite administrative powers. It opens a window during which Congress can act, the OMB can respond to comments, and the courts can continue to review relevant litigation.

December 12 as the Reality of Compromise

If no permanent ban is enacted, the issue resurfaces. If no annual budget is ready, the threat of a government shutdown also returns. A temporary victory is useful when it serves to build the next one. It becomes a form of anesthesia when it merely allows us to forget.

The Democratic Party has bought some time—that much is true. It has not secured the executive branch’s surrender—that would be false. Between these two statements lies the entire difference between governing and issuing a triumphant press release.

A respite offers protection. It never replaces the rule that should remain in place.

The Republicans protected the state from their president

Susan Collins and the Domestic Limit

The Republican chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Susan Collins, helped broker the compromise and opposed the OMB rule. Her role prevents the simplistic narrative of a Democratic Senate standing up to Trump. The resistance also comes from within her own party.

This deserves recognition without turning her into a heroine. Collins supports many Republican priorities. She has not broken with the president. Here, she defended an appropriations process and the authority of her institution. Serious politics is judged by the actual action, not by the moral costume we’d like to make her wear.

Loyalty That Knows How to Say No

Critical Trumpism should start here. Supporting a president does not mean handing him every lever of power. Rejecting the further politicization of subsidies or flexibility in funding transfers does not mean joining the opposition. It means believing that even a right-wing government needs rules.

I give credit to the Republicans who voted for this bill. Not because they have ceased to be Republicans. But because they understood, on this specific issue, that protecting their majority did not require them to expand all of their president’s powers.

Unlimited loyalty is no longer loyalty. It is an abdication.

The precedent goes beyond Donald Trump

Every tool outlives its inventor

A rule designed for the current administration does not die with it. Political control over grants, once normalized, becomes available to the next president, and then the one after that. Elected officials who applaud today may discover tomorrow that their universities, cities, or agencies no longer align with the White House’s priorities.

That is the weakness of ordinary emergency powers: they arrive without warning. A form changes. Approval moves up a level. An agency must wait for the green light from an appointed official. Then what seemed administrative becomes the permanent architecture of power.

Common rules also protect the opponent

A democracy does not prove its strength by giving all the tools to the side we prefer. It proves it by denying the tools we would not want to see in the hands of the opposition. The test is never Trump alone. The test is what we would accept from a Democratic president wielding the same leverage.

The Senate suspended a rule for a few weeks. The principle worth preserving endures longer: public funds should not become a reward for compliance, regardless of the name on the Oval Office door.

Power changes hands. The tool, however, remains on the table.

What the Senate Must Do on Its Own Initiative

Turn the temporary suspension into a permanent ban

The first task is clear: enact permanent safeguards against the partisan use of grants, with transparent criteria, genuine judicial oversight, and a defined role for agency expertise. Congress cannot repeal a rule in August, only to let it be revived in December out of weariness.

The second task is to finalize the twelve appropriations bills. A continuing resolution is an emergency tool, not a system of government. The more Congress relies on stopgap measures, the more opportunities it gives the executive branch to negotiate exceptions and exploit the silence.

Avoiding the Next Drama

Elected officials also have a responsibility not to create a new crisis on December 11. Programs should not depend on an all-night negotiation after the elections. Federal employees should not be used as bargaining chips in a partisan deal.

The 90-to-6 vote created a moral obligation. Such a large majority cannot claim, four months later, that the continuity of the government had suddenly become impossible. It proved that an agreement exists. It now must prove that it can endure.

Institutional courage begins with a vote. It is measured by what survives the vote.

The Seawall and the Tide

What Was Actually Achieved

The Senate passed a bipartisan bill. It kept the government open through December 11. It placed a freeze on the OMB rule. It limited the ability to add funds or transfer them to the immigration apparatus. The White House announced that it would support the compromise.

All of this matters. All of this deserves better than automatic cynicism. In a fragmented Congress, 90 votes constitute a political bloc capable of holding the executive branch in check and reducing the risk of a shutdown.

What Lies Ahead

The House has not yet given its final approval. The bill has not become law. The annual appropriations remain incomplete. The OMB freeze is set to expire. The stopgap funding is set to expire. The battle over the border, subsidies, and the stock market’s influence will return.

An 89-to-4 vote opened the door. A 90-to-6 vote pushed the levee forward. But a temporary levee already bears the date of the tide it will have to face.

The Senate has shown that it can say no to presidential overreach without undermining the continuity of the state. The House will now decide whether this rejection becomes law or remains just a nice summer statistic.

December 11 is already approaching.

Signed, Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist’s Transparency Box

Editorial Stance

I am not a journalist, but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analyzing the geopolitical, economic, and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work consists of dissecting political strategies, understanding global economic trends, contextualizing the decisions of international actors, and offering analytical perspectives on the transformations that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim to possess the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which is limited to factual reporting. I strive for analytical clarity, rigorous interpretation, and a deep understanding of the complex issues that affect us all. My role is to make sense of the facts, situate them within their historical and strategic context, and offer a critical interpretation of events.

Methodology and Sources

This text respects the fundamental distinction between verified facts and interpretive analyses. The methodological rule is consistent: factual information is published only if it is supported by a verifiable source, and the sources actually used in this article are listed under “Sources,” never here.

Categories of primary sources used by the publication, when applicable: official press releases from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organizations, and dispatches from recognized international news agencies.

Types of secondary sources: specialized publications, internationally recognized news media, analyses from established research institutions, and reports from sector-specific organizations.

When an article cites statistical, economic, or geopolitical data, it is sourced from data-producing institutions (intergovernmental organizations, central banks, national statistical institutes), and the specific institution is listed under “Sources.”

Nature of the Analysis

The analyses, interpretations, and perspectives presented in the analytical sections of this article constitute a critical and contextual synthesis based on available information, observed trends, and expert commentary cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, contextualize them within the framework of contemporary geopolitical and economic dynamics, and give them coherent meaning within the broader narrative of the transformations shaping our era. These analyses reflect expertise developed through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a situation documented as of its publication date, not a prediction: subsequent developments may alter these perspectives. No updates are promised in advance; when an article is corrected or supplemented, the change is dated within the text.

COLUMN: The Senate Reined in Trump, but Did Not Regain Control Over Appropriations