Congress leaves for Christmas, closes the books on 2025

Source: Roll Call

Posted December 19, 2025 at 6:30am


The Senate followed the House in leaving for the Christmas break on Thursday, clearing another batch of President Donald Trump’s nominations but kicking to January the fate of the next handful of spending bills. The Senate confirmed, 53-43, an en bloc package of 97 nominations. Senators also by unanimous consent confirmed the nomination of Kevin E. Lunday to be commandant of the Coast Guard. And they reached an agreement to set up confirmation of additional Trump nominees when they return in January.

“One of the lessons I think you always have to keep in perspective in this job, is that the most important vote isn’t the last vote, it’s the next vote,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters late Thursday night, after being asked about lessons from his first year leading the chamber. According to Thune’s office, the additional civilian confirmations Thursday night bring the total for the year to 417.

“When we close out this year with a total of 417 nominees [confirmed], we will have the backlog of nominees essentially cleared,” Thune said on the Senate floor. Senate Republicans had essentially changed the Senate rules earlier in the year to allow them to get long lists of nominees through to confirmation without needing Democratic votes, after Democrats blocked pre-recess unanimous consent packages that used to be commonplace.

But the aspiration of Thune and Senate Republican appropriators to get the ball rolling on a package of fiscal 2026 spending bills was not to be. The rules require unanimous consent to combine more than one regular appropriations measure into a single bill — and that agreement proved elusive despite talks that went on throughout the day Thursday.

Read more: https://rollcall.com/2025/12/19/congress-leaves-for-christmas-closes-the-books-on-2025/

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The highlighted section was something that I did not know. I.e., in order to do a "Minibus" (with a couple together) or "Omnibus" (usually a larger number of bills or whatever was left not done individually), requires a "unanimous consent" in the Senate.

So aside from the usual (R)s like Paul, who tend to "buck", I expect some (D)s were dead set AGAINST doing that without their input (and without extracting any benefits).