Senate Takes First Vote on 417-Page Permitting Bill as Funding Expires Dec. 11
The House and Senate returned to Washington on Monday with government funding set to expire Dec. 11 and a Senate procedural vote on a bipartisan permitting bill scheduled for Monday evening.
The funding deadline is the hard one. Lawmakers can either pass a full suite of appropriations bills or another stopgap to keep spending at current levels.
The math points to the stopgap. A dozen full-year appropriations bills would total around $1.9T, and there isn't time to negotiate them in five weeks.
Democrats won sizable majorities in both chambers in last week's midterms, taking at least 255 House seats and possibly 56 in the Senate. Appropriations still need 60 votes in the Senate, so Republicans need Democratic help right when Democrats have reason to wait.
The debt ceiling clock starts next summer
Federal debt hit $40T for the first time in September, against the $41.1T ceiling written into the 2025 budget reconciliation law.
Debt Sits Just Below the $41.1T Ceiling
Federal debt and the statutory ceiling, trillions of dollars, November 2026
Bar chart. Trillions of dollars. Federal debt: Trillions of dollars 40. Statutory ceiling: Trillions of dollars 41.10.
Source: CNBC, Nov. 9, 2026
The Bipartisan Policy Center expects Treasury to reach its maximum borrowing capacity by mid-summer. Bank of America estimated on Nov. 6 that the US may no longer be able to meet all its obligations by November 2027.
Some Republicans want to raise the limit now, while they still control both chambers. Democrats are more likely to hold it as leverage in the next Congress, which pushes the fight into 2027 and keeps a tail risk hanging over Treasury markets.
The permitting bill is the AI infrastructure story
Four senators introduced the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act on Sept. 30, a 417-page draft covering pipelines, power lines, mines, and solar and wind farms.
It would set a 45-day deadline for agencies to decide on a project after environmental review, and a 150-day limit for anyone to challenge a project in court. The Natural Resources Defense Council estimates it could cut transmission line build times from 10 years or more to around five or six.
That speed is what data center developers want. Long pipeline delays slow data center construction, and faster gas hookups would help operators building their own generation on site rather than waiting on the grid.
The bill would also force large data center customers to pay more of the transmission costs they create, and require utilities to disclose electricity sales to them.
Its odds got worse after the election. TD Cowen cut the chance of lame duck passage from 40% to 25%, and likely next House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries opposes the bill as drafted.
The Senate's other to-do list includes the defense authorization bill and a farm bill, while the House is expected to take up an impeachment resolution against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Monday's vote is the first test of whether any of it clears before January.
