Automatic Funding Kicks In During Lapses, Forcing Congress to Work Under Travel Bans and Supermajority Rules

Here’s a bill that tries to solve one of the most frustrating things about modern governance: the government shutdown. The Prevent Government Shutdowns Act is essentially a legislative fire extinguisher, establishing an automatic continuing appropriations (ACA) mechanism designed to keep the lights on and paychecks flowing when Congress misses a funding deadline.

If a lapse happens, the government doesn't grind to a halt. Instead, funding for programs, projects, and activities automatically continues for 14-day increments at the previous year's spending rate. This is huge for federal employees and for people who rely on essential services, eliminating the immediate chaos of a hard shutdown. Every 14 days, the funding rolls over again until a final appropriations bill is passed. Think of it as a mandatory, two-week extension that forces everyone back to the negotiating table without the drama of closed national parks or delayed tax refunds. The bill is clear: any money spent during this ACA period gets charged to the final funding bill when it eventually passes.

The Emergency Brake: No More Road Trips

While the ACA prevents the worst of the shutdown fallout, it applies serious pressure to the people responsible for the funding lapse: Congress and key executive branch staff (like those at the Office of Management and Budget). During any period where the automatic funding is active, these “covered officers and employees” face a near-total ban on official travel. You can’t use taxpayer funds for official trips, and you can’t even use campaign funds for travel connected to your official duties. The only exceptions are traveling back to D.C. if you were already away, or moving within the National Capital Region.

This provision is designed to keep lawmakers and budget officials in town and focused on the job. For a busy Member of Congress who might rely on travel for oversight or constituent work, this is a major restriction. The message is simple: If you haven’t funded the government, your priority is fixing that, not flying around.

Legislative Lock-Down: Two-Thirds to Talk

Perhaps the most dramatic change in this bill is what happens inside the House and Senate chambers during one of these automatic funding periods. The bill imposes a procedural lock-down on legislative business. Congress cannot move to proceed to any matter except for a few narrow exceptions: the appropriations bill itself, a measure dealing with the debt limit, or a matter necessary to establish a quorum. For the first 30 days of a lapse, almost all other legislative work stops.

This means no passing non-funding bills, no debating unrelated policy, and no recessing or adjourning for more than 23 hours. The chambers are essentially forced to convene daily and focus solely on passing the budget. To waive or suspend these strict procedural rules—even for a week—requires an affirmative vote of two-thirds of the Members. This supermajority requirement is a massive hurdle, effectively forcing bipartisan cooperation to get anything done besides funding the government.

Who Gets Squeezed by the Fine Print?

While the automatic funding is a relief for many, the bill includes a provision that could create headaches for state governments and grantees. The bill specifically states that during the ACA period, programs that typically distribute large amounts of funding quickly at the start of the fiscal year (like grants to states or certain federal aid programs) must not initiate these high initial rates of operation. Furthermore, no new grants can be awarded if doing so would interfere with final funding decisions made later.

For a state agency relying on a large federal grant to kick off a major infrastructure project or an educational program on October 1st, this delay is a real problem. The bill aims to prevent agencies from prematurely committing funds that might be cut or altered in the final budget, but the practical effect is that it slows down the start of important programs that rely on timely, upfront cash flow. This is a classic example of a policy designed to solve a political problem that creates an administrative bottleneck for the people on the ground trying to get work done.