Congressional Glossary
What is a continuing resolution?
A continuing resolution, or CR, is a stopgap law that keeps the government funded at existing levels when Congress has not passed its regular appropriations bills. No CR and no appropriations means a shutdown.
In one sentence
A continuing resolution, or CR, is a stopgap law that keeps the government funded at existing levels when Congress has not passed its regular appropriations bills. No CR and no appropriations means a shutdown.
Votes needed: A simple majority in each chamber, after 60 votes for cloture in the Senate
What a continuing resolution is
A continuing resolution is Congress buying time. The government's funding authority expires when the fiscal year ends on September 30, and funding the next year takes 12 appropriations bills. When those bills are not finished, a CR continues funding, usually at the prior year's levels, for a fixed period: a few days, a few weeks, sometimes a full year (senate.gov). It is a law like any other, passed by both chambers and signed by the president. Only its content is temporary.
How a CR works
Most CRs are short and blunt: keep spending at current rates until a named date. Add-ons called anomalies adjust specific accounts where flat funding would break something. The named date is the point. It creates the next deadline, and the funding fight reorganizes around it. A Congress can chain several CRs across a winter before the real bills, or an omnibus, finally pass. The device is not new; Congress has needed at least one stopgap in nearly every fiscal year in living memory.
CRs and shutdowns
A CR exists to prevent exactly one thing. If appropriations lapse with no CR in place, agencies must halt work that is not legally excepted, and the government shuts down. The stakes are not hypothetical: the funding lapse that began on October 1, 2025 became the longest shutdown on record, running 43 days before a stopgap ended it. Every modern shutdown has ended the same way, with a CR that both chambers could finally pass.
What a CR vote looks like
Because a CR must clear the Senate's 60-vote bar for cloture, the Senate minority holds real leverage over every stopgap. The full-year CR for fiscal 2025, H.R. 1968, shows the shape: the House passed it narrowly, 217 to 213, on March 11, 2025, and the Senate cleared it 54 to 46 three days later, but only after enough minority senators supplied the votes to end debate (congress.gov).
Why CRs are criticized
Agencies plan badly on six-week horizons. A CR freezes last year's priorities in place, keeps funding programs that were set to end, and starves new ones that were set to begin. Programs that sign long-term contracts, defense procurement above all, pay a documented premium for the uncertainty. Members of both parties call this governing by cliff, then vote for the next CR anyway, because the alternative actually on the table is never a finished budget. It is a shutdown.
Common questions
A continuing resolution is a temporary funding law Congress passes when its 12 regular appropriations bills are not done. It typically extends the previous year's funding levels until a set date, keeping agencies open while negotiations continue. It must pass both chambers and be signed like any other law.
If existing funding lapses with nothing to replace it, the government shuts down: agencies stop non-excepted work and furlough employees. The lapse that began on October 1, 2025 ran 43 days, the longest shutdown on record, before a stopgap finally ended it.
Whatever length Congress writes into it. Most run weeks to a few months, ending on a date that becomes the next funding deadline. Congress sometimes chains several short CRs in a single year, and occasionally passes a full-year CR, as it did for fiscal 2025 with H.R. 1968.