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Fact check: What votes and amendments passed in Congress for the 2025 continuing resolution and who were the key sponsors?
Executive Summary
The concrete legislative record in the provided materials shows two distinct continuing-appropriations actions in 2025: a full-year appropriations law enacted in March 2025 that provided continuing funding for FY2025, and a separate FY2026 continuing resolution that failed a Senate advance vote in late September/October 2025. H.R.1968 became Public Law 119‑4 on March 15, 2025, while H.R.5371, the FY2026 continuing resolution introduced later, failed to secure the 60 votes needed to advance in the Senate [1] [2]. The sources supplied list roll call records and summaries but do not provide comprehensive amendment-level rollups or complete sponsor lists for every action; where sponsor information is available, it is noted below [3] [4].
1. A Law Passed in March That Covered FY2025 — What It Did and Who Filed the Bill
The record identifies H.R.1968, titled the Full‑Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025, as introduced on March 10 and enacted as Public Law 119‑4 on March 15, 2025, providing continuing appropriations and targeted extensions across agriculture, commerce, defense, and healthcare [1]. The source frames this as a full-year funding measure rather than a short-term stopgap, indicating Congress completed a fuller appropriations package for FY2025 instead of relying exclusively on short continuing resolutions. The supplied summary enumerates policy areas affected but does not list the bill sponsor or the roll‑call breakdown in that source, so the identities of the legislative managers or cosponsors for H.R.1968 are not available in the provided material [1]. The legislative impact in practice was to maintain funding streams at specified levels and extend expiring authorities for that fiscal year.
2. The Later FY2026 CR That Failed to Advance — Vote Counts and Timing
The materials document a Senate procedural vote on H.R.5371 — the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2026 — that failed to meet the 60‑vote threshold needed to advance, with reports citing vote tallies of 55‑45 and 54‑45 in different roll call summaries and summaries of the failed cloture/advancement attempts [2] [5]. These entries place the Senate action in late September and October 2025, with specific references to a September 30, 2025 roll call and later reporting on a vote in the final week of October as part of an ongoing series of failed attempts to move Republican‑backed funding measures forward [2] [5]. The failure to obtain 60 votes demonstrates bipartisan division and shows the procedural hurdle for advancing continuing resolutions in the contemporary Senate environment [5].
3. Sponsor Attribution Where Available — Who Authored the FY2026 CR
Among the supplied items, sponsor information is explicitly recorded for H.R.5371: the bill was introduced by Representative Tom Cole (R‑OK‑4) and described as a CR that would fund agencies largely at FY2025 levels while adding specific security funding and extensions of certain expiring programs [4]. The materials assert this sponsor identification directly and attribute legislative intent and scope to the bill text summary [4]. For H.R.1968, the March enacted law, the source summary does not name the sponsor in the provided extract, so a sponsor cannot be confirmed from the supplied dataset [1]. The roll call trackers referenced contain broader vote lists that could identify sponsors and managers but the specific sponsor names beyond Cole for H.R.5371 are not presented among the excerpts [3].
4. Conflicting Vote Reports and the Political Context Around Failed Votes
The supplied accounts include slightly differing numeric tallies and framing: one roll call lists 55 yeas and 45 nays on September 30, 2025, while reporting around October 28, 2025 describes a 54‑45 failure and characterizes the measure as the latest in a string of Republican‑backed attempts that did not gain Democratic support [2] [5]. The narrative framing in the excerpts also includes statements attributed to Vice President JD Vance about arrangements to pay military personnel despite the stalemate, signaling an executive‑branch talking point and a partisan messaging dynamic [5]. These differences in how the same events are numerically and rhetorically presented illustrate both procedural variation in successive votes and competing political narratives reported in contemporaneous roll call and news summaries [5].
5. What’s Missing from the Supplied Record and Why It Matters
The dataset lacks a comprehensive list of amendments that may have been proposed, adopted, or rejected on the continuing resolutions, and it omits full sponsor and manager attributions for some measures — notably H.R.1968 — as well as text of amendments and detailed roll‑call matrices tied to specific amendment votes [3] [1]. Some supplied sources are unrelated or administrative (cookie/sponsorship pages) and do not contribute legislative detail [6] [7] [8]. These gaps prevent a complete, granular accounting of every amendment and floor maneuver associated with the 2025 continuing‑funding actions; the record as provided allows firm statements about passage or failure of major bills and a named sponsor for H.R.5371, but not a fully itemized amendment history [3] [4].