The powers lapsed briefly once before — in 2015 — because of a similar stall in the Senate. The impact of a short-term gap may be small. Any existing court orders for business records and special types of wiretaps, for example, will still be valid during the lull. And the F.B.I. can most likely use other authorities, like grand jury subpoenas, from its criminal investigative toolbox as a workaround.

Still, the lapse could cause some operational headaches, and the spectacle of governing dysfunction arising from Congress in the national security arena and a measure for which there is very likely majority support was striking.

Mr. Trump and his supporters are invested in promulgating a conspiracy theory that the F.B.I.’s counterintelligence investigation into Russia’s efforts to manipulate the 2016 presidential election was actually a politically motivated attempt to sabotage his presidency, not a legitimate attempt to understand a foreign power’s interference in American democracy.

An investigation by the Justice Department’s independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, concluded that the Russia investigation — including efforts to understand the nature of numerous links between Russia and the Trump campaign — had a lawful basis, and found no evidence that its opening was politically motivated.

Mr. Horowitz did, however, uncover serious errors and omissions in one aspect of the inquiry: investigators’ applications for permission from the FISA court to wiretap Carter Page, a former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser with many links to Russian officials.

None of the expiring tools were involved in the Page applications. But the legislation to extend them has become a vehicle for Congress to respond to the inspector general’s findings. The House bill, for example, would push the FISA court to appoint an outsider to critique the government’s arguments when a wiretap application raised serious issues about First Amendment activity, which could include political campaigns.