The bill
Continuing Appropriations and Extensions and Other Matters Act, 2026
S. 2882, 119th Congress — read as touching Hospitals & Health Systems.
Sponsored by
Sen. Murray, Patty [D-WA]
ID: M001111
Follow the money
The bill
S. 2882, 119th Congress — read as touching Hospitals & Health Systems.
The sponsor
Every bill has someone who introduced it. That name is where the paper trail starts.
The money
30 itemised contributions to this sponsor, pulled from FEC filings.
The alignment
This bill's text tracks the "Introduction" section, p. 40-42 of the Mandate for Leadership.
Track this bill's progress through the legislative process
Latest Action
Motion by Senator Schumer to reconsider, under the order of 10/9/2025, not having voted on the prevailing side, the vote by which the third cloture motion on the motion to proceed to S. 2882 was not invoked (Record Vote No. 557) entered in Senate.
October 8, 2025
📍 Current Status
Next: The bill will be reviewed by relevant committees who will debate, amend, and vote on it.
1. Introduction: A member of Congress introduces a bill in either the House or Senate.
2. Committee Review: The bill is sent to relevant committees for study, hearings, and revisions.
3. Floor Action: If approved by committee, the bill goes to the full chamber for debate and voting.
4. Other Chamber: If passed, the bill moves to the other chamber (House or Senate) for the same process.
5. Conference: If both chambers pass different versions, a conference committee reconciles the differences.
6. Presidential Action: The President can sign the bill into law, veto it, or take no action.
7. Became Law: If signed (or if Congress overrides a veto), the bill becomes law!
Another exercise in legislative theater, where our esteemed lawmakers pretend to be responsible stewards of the public purse while actually perpetuating a never-ending cycle of waste, corruption, and bureaucratic bloat.
Let's dissect this monstrosity, shall we?
**Total Funding Amounts and Budget Allocations:** The bill authorizes "such amounts as may be necessary" for various departments and agencies, which is code for "we have no idea how much money we're actually spending." The lack of specificity is a hallmark of legislative laziness. I'd wager that the actual funding amounts will be determined by backroom deals and earmarks, not by any rational assessment of need or effectiveness.
**Key Programs and Agencies Receiving Funds:** The bill continues to fund various programs and agencies at levels similar to previous years, with some notable exceptions. The Department of Defense, for instance, receives a significant chunk of funding, but with caveats that prevent new production of items not funded in 2025 or prior years. This is likely a result of lobbying efforts by defense contractors who want to maintain their gravy train.
**Notable Increases or Decreases:** There are no significant increases or decreases from previous years, which suggests that our lawmakers are more interested in maintaining the status quo than making meaningful changes. The only notable exception is the provision that prohibits the initiation of new projects or activities without specific appropriations, which is a token attempt to appear fiscally responsible.
**Riders and Policy Provisions:** The bill includes several riders and policy provisions that have nothing to do with funding levels. For example, Section 111 attempts to limit the President's ability to propose changes to program funding, which is a transparent attempt to undermine executive authority. There are also provisions related to entitlements, mandatory payments, and food assistance programs, which are likely included to appease various special interest groups.
**Fiscal Impact and Deficit Implications:** The bill's fiscal impact is predictable: it will contribute to the ever-growing national debt and perpetuate a culture of fiscal irresponsibility. The lack of specificity in funding amounts and the inclusion of riders and policy provisions ensure that this bill will be a budget-buster.
In conclusion, this appropriations bill is a symptom of a deeper disease: the chronic inability of our lawmakers to prioritize responsible governance over partisan politics and special interests. It's a legislative placebo, designed to make voters feel like something is being done while actually perpetuating the same old wasteful practices.
Diagnosis: Terminal case of bureaucratic bloat, with symptoms including fiscal irresponsibility, lack of transparency, and an inability to prioritize meaningful reform. Prognosis: Poor. Treatment: A healthy dose of skepticism and a willingness to challenge the status quo.
Sen. Murray, Patty [D-WA]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
No PAC contributions found
No committee contributions found
Hub layout: Politicians in center, donors arranged by type in rings around them.
Showing 68 nodes and 30 connections (80 secondary connections hidden)
Total contributions: $83,550
Showing top 24 donors by contribution amount
Which industries are materially affected by specific provisions in this bill. 23 helped, 1 harmed.
Section 2111 extends increased inpatient hospital payment adjustments for certain low-volume hospitals, providing continued funding that benefits hospitals and health systems.
Section 131 allows Department of Defense funds for Shipbuilding and Conversion, Navy to be used for completion of prior year shipbuilding programs (Virginia Class Submarine Programs), and Section 132 extends funding for the E-7 Wedgetail program, both benefiting defense contractors.
Section 2102 extends Special Diabetes Programs for Type I Diabetes and for Indians, providing funding for diabetes treatments and medications, which benefits pharmaceutical manufacturers.
Sections 2309, 2310, and 2311 extend various cybersecurity programs (National Cybersecurity Protection System, State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program, Cybersecurity Information Sharing), directly benefiting cybersecurity firms.
Section 2115 extends funding for outreach and assistance for low-income programs, including State Health Insurance Assistance Programs, Area Agencies on Aging, Aging and Disability Resource Centers, and coordination efforts, which supports health insurance enrollment and assistance activities.
Section 163 maintains Essential Air Service program operations, supporting surface transportation logistics and freight rail/trucking industries that depend on air cargo connections.
+ 18 more industries not shown.
For each industry this bill affects, here's what the sponsor (Sen. Murray, Patty [D-WA])received from donors associated with that industry during the 2022–present cycles. Donations are not proof of intent — they are a record of who funds the people writing the law.
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document.
— 7 — Foreword Instead, party leaders negotiate one multitrillion-dollar spending bill—several thousand pages long—and then vote on it before anyone, literally, has had a chance to read it. Debate time is restricted. Amendments are prohibited. And all of this is backed up against a midnight deadline when the previous “omnibus” spending bill will run out and the federal government “shuts down.” This process is not designed to empower 330 million American citizens and their elected representatives, but rather to empower the party elites secretly nego- tiating without any public scrutiny or oversight. In the end, congressional leaders’ behavior and incentives here are no differ- ent from those of global elites insulating policy decisions—over the climate, trade, public health, you name it—from the sovereignty of national electorates. Public scrutiny and democratic accountability make life harder for policymakers—so they skirt it. It’s not dysfunction; it’s corruption. And despite its gaudy price tag, the federal budget is not even close to the worst example of this corruption. That distinction belongs to the “Administrative State,” the dismantling of which must a top priority for the next conservative President. The term Administrative State refers to the policymaking work done by the bureaucracies of all the federal government’s departments, agencies, and millions of employees. Under Article I of the Constitution, “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.” That is, federal law is enacted only by elected legislators in both houses of Congress. This exclusive authority was part of the Framers’ doctrine of “separated powers.” They not only split the federal government’s legislative, executive, and judicial powers into different branches. They also gave each branch checks over the others. Under our Constitution, the legislative branch—Congress—is far and away the most powerful and, correspondingly, the most accountable to the people. In recent decades, members of the House and Senate discovered that if they give away that power to the Article II branch of government, they can also deny responsi- bility for its actions. So today in Washington, most policy is no longer set by Congress at all, but by the Administrative State. Given the choice between being powerful but vulnerable or irrelevant but famous, most Members of Congress have chosen the latter. Congress passes intentionally vague laws that delegate decision-making over a given issue to a federal agency. That agency’s bureaucrats—not just unelected but seemingly un-fireable—then leap at the chance to fill the vacuum created by Congress’s preening cowardice. The federal government is growing larger and less constitutionally accountable—even to the President—every year. l A combination of elected and unelected bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency quietly strangles domestic energy production through difficult-to-understand rulemaking processes; — 8 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise l Bureaucrats at the Department of Homeland Security, following the lead of a feckless Administration, order border and immigration enforcement agencies to help migrants criminally enter our country with impunity; l Bureaucrats at the Department of Education inject racist, anti-American, ahistorical propaganda into America’s classrooms; l Bureaucrats at the Department of Justice force school districts to undermine girls’ sports and parents’ rights to satisfy transgender extremists; l Woke bureaucrats at the Pentagon force troops to attend “training” seminars about “white privilege”; and l Bureaucrats at the State Department infuse U.S. foreign aid programs with woke extremism about “intersectionality” and abortion.3 Unaccountable federal spending is the secret lifeblood of the Great Awokening. Nearly every power center held by the Left is funded or supported, one way or another, through the bureaucracy by Congress. Colleges and school districts are funded by tax dollars. The Administrative State holds 100 percent of its power at the sufferance of Congress, and its insulation from presidential discipline is an unconstitutional fairy tale spun by the Washington Establishment to protect its turf. Members of Congress shield themselves from constitutional accountability often when the White House allows them to get away with it. Cultural institutions like public libraries and public health agencies are only as “independent” from public accountability as elected officials and voters permit. Let’s be clear: The most egregious regulations promulgated by the current Administration come from one place: the Oval Office. The President cannot hide behind the agencies; as his many executive orders make clear, his is the respon- sibility for the regulations that threaten American communities, schools, and families. A conservative President must move swiftly to do away with these vast abuses of presidential power and remove the career and political bureaucrats who fuel it. Properly considered, restoring fiscal limits and constitutional accountability to the federal government is a continuation of restoring national sovereignty to the American people. In foreign affairs, global strategy, federal budgeting and pol- icymaking, the same pattern emerges again and again. Ruling elites slash and tear at restrictions and accountability placed on them. They centralize power up and away from the American people: to supra-national treaties and organizations, to left-wing “experts,” to sight-unseen all-or-nothing legislating, to the unelected career bureaucrats of the Administrative State.
— 7 — Foreword Instead, party leaders negotiate one multitrillion-dollar spending bill—several thousand pages long—and then vote on it before anyone, literally, has had a chance to read it. Debate time is restricted. Amendments are prohibited. And all of this is backed up against a midnight deadline when the previous “omnibus” spending bill will run out and the federal government “shuts down.” This process is not designed to empower 330 million American citizens and their elected representatives, but rather to empower the party elites secretly nego- tiating without any public scrutiny or oversight. In the end, congressional leaders’ behavior and incentives here are no differ- ent from those of global elites insulating policy decisions—over the climate, trade, public health, you name it—from the sovereignty of national electorates. Public scrutiny and democratic accountability make life harder for policymakers—so they skirt it. It’s not dysfunction; it’s corruption. And despite its gaudy price tag, the federal budget is not even close to the worst example of this corruption. That distinction belongs to the “Administrative State,” the dismantling of which must a top priority for the next conservative President. The term Administrative State refers to the policymaking work done by the bureaucracies of all the federal government’s departments, agencies, and millions of employees. Under Article I of the Constitution, “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.” That is, federal law is enacted only by elected legislators in both houses of Congress. This exclusive authority was part of the Framers’ doctrine of “separated powers.” They not only split the federal government’s legislative, executive, and judicial powers into different branches. They also gave each branch checks over the others. Under our Constitution, the legislative branch—Congress—is far and away the most powerful and, correspondingly, the most accountable to the people. In recent decades, members of the House and Senate discovered that if they give away that power to the Article II branch of government, they can also deny responsi- bility for its actions. So today in Washington, most policy is no longer set by Congress at all, but by the Administrative State. Given the choice between being powerful but vulnerable or irrelevant but famous, most Members of Congress have chosen the latter. Congress passes intentionally vague laws that delegate decision-making over a given issue to a federal agency. That agency’s bureaucrats—not just unelected but seemingly un-fireable—then leap at the chance to fill the vacuum created by Congress’s preening cowardice. The federal government is growing larger and less constitutionally accountable—even to the President—every year. l A combination of elected and unelected bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency quietly strangles domestic energy production through difficult-to-understand rulemaking processes;
Policy matches are calculated using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text. A score of 60% or higher indicates meaningful thematic overlap. This does not imply direct causation or intent, but highlights areas where legislation aligns with Project 2025 policy objectives.
A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval of the proposed foreign military sale to the Government of Israel of certain defense articles and services.
Establishing the congressional budget for the United States Government for fiscal year 2025 and setting forth the appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 2026 through 2034.
HELP Response and Recovery Act