This bill became law on 2025-03-15 as Public Law No. 119-4.
The summary below describes the bill at the version we last reviewed; the enacted text may differ.
YourVoice.Now Summary
Your MoneyWorkers & JobsCivil LibertiesCriminal Justice & Due ProcessCorporate BenefitsEnvironmentTransparency & AccountabilityTargeted & Unrelated ProvisionsKept the government open through September 2025 — health programs extended, firefighter pay raised for good.
Your Money
The National Flood Insurance Program's authority was set to lapse on March 14, 2025. This law let it keep writing and renewing policies through September 30, 2025, backdated to the lapse date.
Division B added $2,135,835,616 for April 1 through September 30, 2025. Community health centers treat patients whether or not they can pay.
Medicare's pandemic-era telehealth rules were due to end March 31, 2025. Patients could still be seen at home, anywhere in the country, through September 30.
The waiver lets a hospital treat you at home for problems that would normally mean an inpatient stay. It was extended six months, to September 30, 2025.
Section 1202 set the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program at $7,597,000,000 for 2025. WIC buys food for pregnant women, new mothers, and young children.
The 2024 law had locked up $14.224 billion in the children's health insurance reserve fund. This law lowered that to $13.059 billion, freeing about $1.2 billion for 2025.
The 2024 justice spending law capped payouts from the Crime Victims Fund at $1.353 billion. This law raised the cap to $1.9 billion, money that helps victims cover medical bills, lost wages, and funerals.
Title XI added $6 billion to the Cost of War Toxic Exposure Fund, on top of every other amount. The fund pays for veterans' care and benefits tied to burn pits and similar exposures.
Workers & Jobs
Section 1807 created a new federal pay table just for wildland firefighters. The raise over the normal scale runs from 42 percent at the lowest grade down to 1.5 percent at the highest.
Firefighters now earn 450 percent of their hourly base rate for each day on a qualifying fire. The extra pay stops once it reaches $9,000 in a calendar year.
Section 1903 permanently cancelled $75 million from the Labor Department's Training and Employment Services account. That money had been set aside for October 2024 through September 2025.
Civil Liberties
Homeland Security and Justice can detect, track, and bring down drones over sites they pick. That power was due to end March 14, 2025, and now runs to September 30.
The National Cybersecurity Protection System scans traffic going in and out of federal networks. Its legal authorization was extended from March 14 to September 30, 2025.
Criminal Justice & Due Process
Fentanyl copycat chemicals stay in Schedule I as a whole class, which carries the harshest drug penalties. The temporary order was extended to September 30, 2025, backdated to when it lapsed.
Federal courts add a $5,000 charge on people convicted of certain crimes who can afford to pay, and the money funds services for trafficking victims. This law extended that charge to September 30, 2025.
The U.S. Parole Commission was set to close after 36 years. Section 1115 gave it a 37th year, so people still serving old-law sentences keep a place to be heard.
The federal payment for lawyers appointed to defend poor people in D.C. courts dropped from $25 million to $12 million. Everything else in that 2024 spending law carried over unchanged.
Corporate Benefits
Two Medicare programs pay extra to small rural hospitals — one for low patient volume, one for hospitals with many Medicare patients. Both were extended through the 2025 budget year.
Medicare's add-on payments for ground ambulance trips, which are higher in rural areas, were set to end April 1, 2025. They now run to October 1, 2025.
Cuts to Medicaid payments for hospitals that treat many uninsured patients were called off for 2025. The cuts were also stretched one year further, so they now run through 2028.
Section 1420 put $89 million behind a new Pentagon loan program for defense suppliers. It can back up to $4 billion in loans, with taxpayers covering the losses.
Environment
Section 1806 set aside $360 million at Interior and $2.39 billion at the Forest Service. The money is held in reserve for fighting fires when the normal accounts run dry.
Section 1801 set three blocks of EPA state and tribal grant money to zero. Those blocks held local water and air projects that members of Congress had named in 2024.
Transparency & Accountability
People who report commodity and derivatives fraud can collect a share of the penalties. Funding for the award program was extended from March 14 to September 30, 2025.
Starting May 15, 2025, the budget office had to report each month on what every agency had spent. Each report compared 2025 spending to the same stretch of 2024.
Section 1412 raised the Pentagon's general transfer authority from $6 billion to $8 billion. That is money the department can shift between accounts without a new vote in Congress.
Section 3106 kept the cost of the health and other-matters divisions off both deficit scorecards. That means this spending does not trigger the automatic cuts those scorecards can set off.
Targeted & Unrelated Provisions
Section 1807 enacted two sections of H.R. 8998, a 2024 Interior spending bill the House passed but never sent to the President. A stopgap funding law almost never writes permanent federal pay rules this way.
Section 1507 steered money to the Sites Reservoir in California and seven other named water projects. Seven are in California; one is in Texas.
Section 1506 raised the spending limit for the Northwestern New Mexico Rural Water Projects Act from $870 million to $1.64 billion.
Section 1602 gave the District of Columbia $90 million for emergency planning and security. Of that, $50 million was tied to the January 2025 presidential inauguration.
Section 11208 pushed the deadline for U.S.-backed loan guarantees to Israel from September 30, 2029 to September 30, 2030.
Section 1111 stripped legal force from every earmark in the 2024 spending laws and their committee reports. Agencies chose where that money went instead.
More about this bill
Federal agencies stayed open through September 30, 2025 under this law. It became Public Law 119-4 on March 15, 2025, one day after funding ran out. Most programs kept their 2024 funding levels and their 2024 rules. If you use Medicare, a community health center, WIC, or a rent voucher, none of it stopped. Government flood insurance also stayed on sale through September 2025. Health programs set to end on March 31, 2025 got six more months. Community health centers got about $2.14 billion for April through September. Medicare kept paying for video visits from home. It also kept paying for hospital-level care at home. Two diabetes programs got about $79.8 million each. Planned cuts to Medicaid money for hospitals that treat many uninsured patients were dropped for 2025. Money moved in both directions. All hometown project earmarks from the 2024 spending bills lost legal effect. About $1.5 billion in EPA grants for local projects went to zero. Federal pay for court-appointed lawyers in D.C. courts fell from $25 million to $12 million. Other lines gained. The yearly cap on crime victim payments rose from $1.353 billion to $1.9 billion. A planned $4.3 billion clawback of pandemic health money shrank to $160 million. An extra $8 billion went to military operations run from the Middle East and Europe commands. One short section did something a funding law rarely does. It wrote two sections of a 2024 Interior bill into permanent law. Those sections gave federal wildland firefighters a permanent pay raise. The raise is largest at the lowest grades, at 42 percent for grade one. They also created deployment pay of 450 percent of an hourly rate, capped at $9,000 a year. A last division extended other powers to September 30, 2025. Those cover drone takedowns near some sites, federal network monitoring, and the strictest drug class for fentanyl copycats.
Congressional Summary
Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025 This act provides continuing FY2025 appropriations for federal agencies and extends various expiring programs and authorities. DIVISION A--FULL-YEAR CONTINUING APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2025 Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2025 This division provides continuing FY2025 appropriations to federal agencies for the remainder of FY2025 and extends various expiring programs and authorities. It is known as a continuing resolution (CR) and prevents a government shutdown that would otherwise occur if the FY2025 appropriations bills have not been enacted when the existing CR expires on March 14, 2025. The CR funds most programs and activities at the FY2024 levels. It also includes several additional provisions that increase or decrease funding for various programs compared to FY2024 levels. For more information, see CRS Report R48517, Section-by-Section Summary of the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2025 (Division A of P.L. 119-4) DIVISION B--HEALTH This division extends several expiring programs and authorities related to public health, Medicare, and Medicaid. TITLE I--PUBLIC HEALTH EXTENDERS (Sec. 2101) This section extends through FY2025 funding for the Teaching Health Center Graduate Medical Education Program, the Community Health Center Fund, and the National Health Service Corps. The Teaching Health Center Graduate Medical Education Program supports education and training of medical students in primary care residency programs in community-based ambulatory patient care centers. The Community Health Center Fund supports (1) grants for outpatient health care facilities that serve medically underserved populations; and (2) the National Health Service Corps, which provides scholarships and student loan repayment awards to health care providers who agree to work in areas with health care provider shortages. (Sec. 2102) This section extends funding through FY2025 for the Special Diabetes Program for Type I Diabetes and the Special Diabetes Program for Indians. (The Special Diabetes Program for Type I Diabetes supports research on the prevention and cure of Type I diabetes, and the Special Diabetes Program for Indians supports diabetes treatment and prevention for tribal populations.) (Sec. 2103) This section extends through FY2025 the authority that allows states and tribes to request the temporary reassignment of state and local health department personnel who are funded through certain federal programs to immediately address a public health emergency. It also extends through FY2025 provisions that prohibit the disclosure of information about Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) programs that could compromise national security (e.g., information regarding biomedical threats). The section extends through FY2025 provisions that authorize HHS to engage with developers of medical countermeasures, and that provide for related antitrust exemptions, for the purpose of furthering product development. Additionally, the section extends through FY2025 the National Advisory Committee on Children and Disasters, the National Advisory Committee on Seniors and Disasters, and the National Advisory Committee on Individuals with Disabilities and Disasters. It also extends through FY2025 the authority of HHS to directly appoint candidates to positions within the National Disaster Medical System if HHS determines the number of personnel in the system is insufficient to address a public health emergency or potential public health emergency. (The National Disaster Medical System is a partnership between HHS, the Department of Defense, and other federal departments that responds to public health and other emergencies, including by deploying medical response teams.) TITLE II--MEDICARE (Sec. 2201) This section extends through FY2025 certain increased payment adjustments for low-volume hospitals under Medicare's inpatient prospective payment system. (Sec. 2202) This section extends through FY2025 the Medicare-Dependent Hospital Program, which provides additional payments to certain small rural hospitals that have a high proportion of Medicare patients. (Sec. 2203) This section extends through FY2025 certain increased payment adjustments for ground ambulance services in rural and other areas under Medicare. (Sec. 2204) This section extends through FY2025 funding for certain Medicare quality-measurement activities. (Sec. 2205) This section extends through FY2025 funding for state health insurance programs, area agencies on aging, aging and disability resource centers, and technical assistance related to outreach and enrollment with respect to Medicare and other programs. (Sec. 2206) This section extends through FY2025 certain minimum adjustments to the work geographic index with respect to payments for physician services under Medicare. (Sec. 2207) This section extends through FY2025 certain telehealth flexibilities under Medicare. Specifically, the section (1) removes geographic restrictions on originating sites (i.e., the location of the beneficiary); (2) allows the home of the beneficiary to serve as the originating site for all services; (3) allows audiologists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech-language pathologists to furnish telehealth services; (4) allows federally qualified health centers and rural health clinics to serve as the distant site (i.e., the location of the health care practitioner); (5) delays implementation of certain in-person evaluation requirements for mental health telehealth services; (6) expands coverage to include audio-only services for evaluation and management and behavioral health services; and (7) allows, for purposes of hospice care recertification under Medicare, physicians and nurse practitioners to fulfill the requirement of a face-to-face encounter with the hospice patient via telehealth. (Sec. 2208) This section extends through FY2025 the Acute Hospital Care at Home Program under Medicare. (The program allows hospitals to treat certain patients from emergency departments or inpatient hospital beds at home.) (Sec. 2209) This section extends through FY2025 coverage under the Medicare prescription drug benefit of prescription oral antiviral drugs that were authorized in response to the COVID-19 public health emergency. (Sec. 2210) This section increases funding for the Medicare Improvement Fund beginning in FY2026. (Sec. 2211) This section extends by two months the sequestration that applies to Medicare payments in FY2032. TITLE III--HUMAN SERVICES (Sec. 2301) This section extends through FY2025 the Sexual Risk Avoidance Education Program. This program supports projects to implement sexual risk avoidance education that teaches participants to voluntarily refrain from nonmarital sexual activities. (Sec. 2302) This section extends through FY2025 the Personal Responsibility Education Program. This program provides grants to states to (1) educate young people about abstinence and contraception to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, and (2) support pregnant youth and mothers under the age of 21. (Sec. 2303) This section extends through FY2025 the Family-to-Family Health Information Centers Program, which is administered by the Health Resources and Services Administration. The program awards grants to family-run organizations to support the provision of information and peer support to families of children with special health care needs. TITLE IV--MEDICAID This section delays reductions to Medicaid disproportionate-share hospital (DSH) allotments until FY2026. (DSHs are hospitals that receive additional payments under Medicaid for treating a large share of low-income patients.) DIVISION C--OTHER MATTERS This division extends several expiring programs and authorities through FY2025. (Sec. 3101) This section extends authorities related to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s whistleblower program. (Sec. 3102) This section extends the authority of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice to take certain actions to mitigate a credible threat to certain facilities or assets from an unmanned aircraft system (UAS). These include certain facilities that are located in the United States and identified as high-risk and a potential target for unlawful UAS activity. (Sec. 3103) This section extends the special assessment on nonindigent persons or entities convicted of certain offenses involving sexual abuse or human trafficking. The assessment funds programs for human trafficking survivors. (Sec. 3104) This section extends the authority for DHS’s National Cybersecurity Protection System and related reporting requirements. The system authorizes multiple activities by DHS to help defend federal agencies from cyberthreats. (Sec. 3105) This section extends, the temporary scheduling order issued by the Drug Enforcement Administration to place fentanyl-related substances in schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. (Sec. 3106) This section exempts the budgetary effects of Divisions B and C of this act from (1) the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGO) Act of 2010, (2) the Senate PAYGO rule, and (3) certain budget scorekeeping rules.
Legislative Subjects
Details
- Congress
- 119th
- Chamber
- House
- Status
- summarized
- Action
- Public Law
- Action Date
- 2025-03-15
- Date Added
- 2026-08-04
- Source
- Congress.gov →
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