Regular Appropriations Bills vs. Continuing Resolutions vs. Supplemental Appropriations (and Omnibus Packages)

Congress funds the discretionary side of the federal government through just three kinds of appropriations measures: regular, continuing, and supplemental. Almost everything else you hear about, from minibuses to "regular order" to full year CRs, describes how those three get packaged and timed. This guide compares them side by side, explains when Congress reaches for each one, and shows how they appear in the bills and data on this site.

Where FY2027 funding stands right now

The current stopgap, H.R. 6500, the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2027, passed the Senate 90-6 on August 8 and the House 370-48 on September 1, and was signed September 2, 2026. It funds the government at FY2026 levels through December 11, 2026. Every vote and date in the chain is on the tracker's stopgap card.

The three types of appropriations measures, compared

What is a regular appropriations bill?

Each year Congress is supposed to pass twelve regular appropriations bills, one for each subcommittee of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees: Agriculture-FDA; Commerce, Justice, Science; Defense; Energy and Water; Financial Services and General Government; Homeland Security; Interior-Environment; Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education; Legislative Branch; Military Construction and Veterans Affairs; National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs (formerly State and Foreign Operations); and Transportation and Housing and Urban Development. The full list, with what each one funds, is in how many appropriations bills are there.

Each chamber writes its own version of every bill. A bill moves through subcommittee markup, full committee markup, a floor vote in each chamber, and a negotiated final version before the President signs it. When all twelve travel that path separately and on time, Washington calls it regular order.

Regular bills are where Congress actually sets priorities. They are the only measures that set new funding levels for every account, start new programs, end old ones, and carry earmarks. They are also the measures that most often run late. Congress has finished all of its regular bills on time only four times since the October 1 fiscal year began: for fiscal years 1977, 1989, 1995, and 1997.

What is a continuing resolution, and how does a CR work?

A continuing resolution is the bridge Congress builds when the regular bills are not done by October 1. It does not write a new budget. It tells agencies to keep operating at a "rate for operations" based on the prior year's appropriations, for a set period, and it lists exceptions where last year's number would not work.

A typical CR does four things:

• Sets the rate. Most agencies continue at the prior year's level, prorated for the length of the CR.
• Sets an end date. The new deadline replaces October 1. The current one runs through December 11, 2026.
• Lists anomalies. These are program by program exceptions: a disaster relief fund that needs more, a nutrition program with rising enrollment, a satellite contract that cannot pause. H.R. 6500 carried anomalies for WIC, FEMA disaster relief, wildfire suppression, SBA lending, Census preparation, and NOAA weather satellites.
• Restricts new activity. Standard CR language bars money from being used "to initiate or resume any project or activity" that was not funded the year before. In practice, that is a ban on new starts.

CRs can also carry unrelated legislation. The current one blocks a proposed federal grants rule from the Office of Management and Budget and extends a hemp production provision for 30 days. The basics are covered in our explainer what is a continuing resolution.

How common are continuing resolutions?

Very. According to the Congressional Research Service:

• 207 CRs were enacted from FY1977 through FY2025.
• Congress enacted at least one CR in every fiscal year since FY1977 except FY1989, FY1995, and FY1997.
• From FY1998 through FY2025, Congress enacted 134 interim CRs, just under five per year, and CRs were in effect for an average of 118 days each fiscal year before the appropriations process was completed.

Interim CR vs. full year CR

Most CRs are interim: they buy weeks or months. A full year CR runs through September 30 and replaces the regular bills it covers, freezing those agencies at roughly the prior year's levels for the whole year. Full year CRs were used for at least some bills in every year from FY1978 through FY1988, and since then in FY1992, FY2007, FY2011, FY2013, and FY2025. Only FY1987, FY1988, FY2011, FY2013, and FY2025 used them for every bill still unfinished. FY2025 is the most recent: the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025 (P.L. 119-4), signed March 15, 2025, funded the entire government for the year, and no regular FY2025 bills or earmarks were enacted at all.

Continuing resolution vs. appropriations bill: what's the difference?

The difference is between deciding and deferring. A regular appropriations bill decides: it sets new numbers, moves money between priorities, and funds new work. A CR defers: it keeps the lights on at last year's settings while the decisions wait.

That freeze has real effects. Agencies under a CR cannot plan a full year, generally cannot launch programs Congress has not funded before, and have little room to move money between accounts beyond the transfer authority existing law already gives them. Programs that were supposed to grow wait. Programs Congress meant to cut keep their old money. And because a CR does not repeat last year's earmarks, community projects wait for the regular bills.

What a CR and a regular bill share is the most important thing: either one, once signed, prevents a shutdown for the agencies it covers. A lapse happens only when a deadline passes with neither in place. Whether that is possible at the next deadline is computed on the shutdown page.

Omnibus vs. regular order: what's the difference?

An omnibus combines some or all of the twelve regular bills into one law, usually titled a "Consolidated Appropriations Act." A package that carries only a few of the bills is often called a minibus. Either way, each bill's text still appears inside the package as its own division, with its own account by account numbers. What changes is the vote: one up or down decision on the whole package instead of twelve separate ones.

CRS counts at least one omnibus measure in 29 of the 42 fiscal years from FY1983 through FY2024. Over that same span, omnibus measures carried 276 of the 525 possible regular appropriations bills, about 53 percent.

The last seven years on the Approps archive make the point even more sharply. From FY2020 through FY2026, not one of the 84 regular bills became law on its own. Every one rode in a package or was replaced by a full year CR.

Leaders reach for packages because time runs short and one vote is easier to win than twelve. A must pass package can also carry bills that might stall on their own. The tradeoff is scrutiny: members often get very little time to read a bill that funds most of the government before they vote on it.

When is a supplemental appropriation used?

A supplemental appropriation provides money after the regular bills are written, for needs that cannot wait for next year's cycle. The most common reasons are natural disasters, military operations and foreign aid, public health emergencies, and programs that run out of money mid year.

Two recent examples:

• Foreign aid and defense, April 2024. P.L. 118-50, signed April 24, 2024, provided about $95 billion for Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo-Pacific. The Defense Department's share alone was $67.3 billion, all designated as an emergency requirement.
• Disasters, December 2024. The American Relief Act, 2025 (P.L. 118-158), signed December 21, 2024, combined four things in one law: a CR through March 14, 2025, $100 billion in emergency disaster aid, $10 billion in economic assistance for farmers, and an extension of the 2018 farm bill through September 30, 2025.

That second example shows how freely Congress mixes the categories. A single law can be a CR, a supplemental, and a vehicle for other legislation all at once.

Supplemental money is usually designated as an emergency requirement, which keeps it outside the base discretionary totals Congress has agreed to. The Congressional Budget Office scores emergency amounts on a separate line from the base.

Rescissions run in the opposite direction: they cancel money Congress already provided. Our piece on the $810 million pocket rescission walks through how that works.

Which funding measure does Congress use? A decision path

What each measure can and cannot do

How these measures appear on Approps

• The tracker follows the twelve regular bills. The tracker shows where each bill stands in both chambers: subcommittee, full committee, and floor.
• The stopgap chain sits beside it. Every CR for the fiscal year, with its votes, anomalies, and end date, is on the stopgap card. When one CR replaces another, the chain shows both.
• The archive labels every vehicle. The archive tags how each bill became law in each year since FY2020: standalone bill, minibus, omnibus, full year CR, or supplemental.
• Earmarks appear only when regular bills pass. The projects on the earmark map come from enacted regular bills and the packages that carry them. That is why a full year CR year, like FY2025, has no earmarks.
• The shutdown question is computed. Will the government shut down? reads the same funding and CR data and answers in one sentence.