When news came out last night about the stunning move that Senate Majority Leader Thune pulled off I have to say I was impressed big time!

So what happened?

After two weeks and 9 failed votes to reopen the Federal Government Majority Leader Thune has now decided to attack this issue from a new angle one that the Democrats likely hoped he would not bring up. Voting on passing bipartisan FULL fiscal year 2026 spending bills. Today, this afternoon, the Senate will be voting to pass AT LEAST the Department of Defense funding which moved out of Committee earlier this year 26-3.

This is a huge deal for a couple different reasons. The first is that military families not getting paid was a huge pressure point and Republicans were trying to use to get the CR passed. However, the Admin realized that they needed to figure out a way to pay these families and so they made moves that allowed that relieving this pressure. This fix was only enough money for a one time fix and so in 2 weeks when military paychecks are due again the Admin wont have this pot of money to pull from again. By voting on legislation to fund the whole Department of Defense Republicans regain the cover and ammunition that they had before last week. If this vote does not get the necessary 60 votes then all the favor that Democrats thought they would be getting goes away. Another huge thing with this move is it does help return us towards regular order for passing legislation. Only recently (this shutdown) have Dems called foul over regular order not being utilized when they didnt use regular order for the previous 4 years.

There is also a chance that the Defense appropriation bill will also be packaged with two other funding bills the Labor and Health as well as the Human Services bill. To do this sort of combined effort though Thune would need unanimous consent from all 100 Senators to waive Senate Rule XVI which prevents two or more appropriations bills from being packaged together on the floor. Packaging bills like this is extremely common in the Senate and has been routine practice for years but all it would take is Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders to say no and tank the whole thing. Again though this would be a pretty significant blow to their attempted imaging as backtracking on bipartisan legislation, possibly preventing military families from getting paid, and not reopening the numerous programs that fall within the Labor and Health as well as the Human Services funding would be an enormous blow to Democrats who have been hitting again and again labor and healthcare issues.

There is also a second action that the whispers about are starting to grow louder and that is the Senate still needs to kickstart the formal process of resolving differences with the House on the Departments of Agriculture and Veterans Affairs, the FDA, and the operations of Congress. This funding was passed before the Government shutdown in a three bill "minibus" and while there have been plenty of informal talks between the House and Senate over all of the FY 26 funding bills I am not sure the Conference process has been formally started for any of them.

To start Conference the Senate again needs 60 votes and while it should be practically automatic to start this process right now I am not sure the 7 Dem votes that would be needed would come to fruition.