Continuing resolution
A temporary funding measure that keeps agencies open at existing levels when the appropriations bills are not finished.
The federal fiscal year begins on 1 October. If Congress has not enacted the appropriations acts that fund the government by then, agencies have no budget authority and must shut down the activities that depend on it.
A continuing resolution avoids that by extending funding, usually at the previous year’s levels, for a stated period. It is a law: it passes both chambers and is signed by the president. What it deliberately does not do is settle the underlying disagreement about the levels — it postpones it to the new expiry date.
A worked example
The fiscal year begins on 1 October. On 28 September, none of the twelve appropriations bills has been enacted. Congress passes a continuing resolution funding every agency at last year’s rate until 15 December. Agencies keep operating; new programmes that were to start this year cannot, because a CR generally provides no authority for activities that had no funding last year. On 15 December the deadline arrives again, and the choice is the same three: full-year bills, another CR, or a lapse.
A CR can also carry “anomalies” — specific exceptions where funding is set at a different rate — and unrelated provisions attached because it is a bill that must pass.
How to read it in coverage
“A short-term spending bill” and “a stopgap” are continuing resolutions. When a story says the government is funded “through” a date, that date is the CR’s expiry and the next deadline — and it is the discretionary slice, not Social Security or interest. A “clean CR” extends funding with nothing else attached. A “full-year CR” is a different animal: it funds the whole year at the old levels and is, in effect, Congress deciding not to write new bills at all.
Congress passes one nearly every year. A CR is what stands between the start of a fiscal year and a government shutdown when the twelve appropriations bills have not been enacted.