Federal food assistance, farm loans and flood insurance will keep operating at current levels until December 11 under a short-term funding law signed September 2.
The President signed H.R. 6500, the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2027, which funds federal agencies at existing levels through December 11 or until Congress passes full-year spending bills, whichever comes first. Without it, much of the federal government would have shut down October 1.
What keeps running
SNAP continues at current program levels. WIC is funded to hold participation steady. The Commodity Assistance Program, which supplies the boxes food pantries hand out and the monthly boxes that go to low-income seniors, is funded to maintain its current caseload.
On the farm side, the U.S. Department of Agriculture can keep closing farm ownership loans that were already approved. Livestock Mandatory Reporting, the price reporting that cattle and hog producers watch, is extended to December 11.
For renters, the Department of Housing and Urban Development was given room to draw on unspent rental assistance money to cover Housing Choice Voucher renewals rather than cut them. Households that lost Emergency Housing Vouchers are covered by tenant protection vouchers, and homelessness assistance grants stay available.
The part worth circling
The National Flood Insurance Program is also extended only to December 11.
That is not an abstraction in a place that watched the Casselman, Laurel Hill Creek and the Youghiogheny come up in August. Anyone carrying a federally backed flood policy, including everyone required to carry one as a condition of a mortgage, is riding on an authorization that runs out in December. Congress has extended the program dozens of times, usually at the last minute. A lapse does not void a policy already in force, but it can hold up new policies and renewals while it lasts.
December 11 is the next cliff
None of this is settled. It is postponed. Every program above runs on a clock that stops December 11, and the argument over full-year spending starts again before Thanksgiving.
If you depend on any of it, the useful thing to know is that nothing changes October 1. The date to keep an eye on is the second week of December.