Appropriations Committees Release Remaining Funding Bills

Legislation rejects draconian Trump cuts and 85+ Republican poison pill riders-protecting investments in Americans' health, financial security, and futures while reasserting Congress' power of the purse

Washington, D.C. - Today, the Senate and House Appropriations Committees released text of the four remaining fiscal year 2026 appropriations bills: the Defense; Homeland Security; Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies; and Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies bills.

In a statement, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said:

"These bills invest in working people across the country and utterly reject President Trump's plan to defund our kids' education, evict millions of families, and slash lifesaving medical research nearly in half. The message to President Trump is: America will continue to fund cancer research, we are going to keep investing in affordable housing and tackling homelessness, Congress will not abolish the Department of Education, and the people's representatives will have the final say on how taxpayer dollars get spent.

"Because Democrats were at the table, this legislation staves off extreme cuts that would have raised families' costs and jeopardized people's health and livelihoods, and it instead delivers new funding for child care, our K-12 schools, rental assistance, and so much else. We protected the Pell Grants that students nationwide count on and soundly rejected the president's baffling plan to cut funding to tackle the opioid crisis and get people the mental health care they need. President Trump wanted to slash funding for medical research by 40%; instead, we provided nearly half a billion more to keep patients' hope alive that a new, life-saving cure might soon be discovered.

"This package invests in our servicemembers and their families-delivering a needed pay raise for our troops, funding more affordable housing options, and providing new resources to make sure we are supporting the brave men and women who serve. It makes major new investments to keep people safe while flying-and delivers vital funding to improve America's roads, bridges, railroads, and public transit.

"Each of these bills reassert Congress' power of the purse and ensure that Congress, not President Trump and Russ Vought, decide how taxpayer dollars get spent-by providing hundreds of specific spending directives that the executive branch must follow.

"While there's a whole lot more I wish these bills would have addressed, these compromise bills protect critical investments in the American people, reject truly heartless cuts that would have undone decades of progress-and they are a significantly better outcome than another yearlong CR. I look forward to ensuring they get signed into law."

On the Homeland Security funding bill, in particular, Senator Murray said:

"What we have seen from Kristi Noem's Department of Homeland Security is frankly sick and un-American. ICE is out-of-control, terrorizing people, including American citizens, and actively making our communities less safe. ICE must be reined in, and unfortunately, neither a CR nor a shutdown would do anything to restrain it, because, thanks to Republicans, ICE is now sitting on a massive slush fund it can tap whether or not we pass a funding bill. The suggestion that a shutdown in this moment might curb the lawlessness of this administration is not rooted in reality: under a CR and in a shutdown, this administration can do everything they are already doing-but without any of the critical guardrails and constraints imposed by a full-year funding bill.

"In this bill, Democrats defeated Republicans' hard-fought push to give ICE an even bigger annual budget, successfully cut ICE's detention budget and capacity, cut CBP's budget by over $1 billion, and secured important, although still insufficient, new constraints on DHS. The bill rejects all Republican poison pill riders and significantly reduces Secretary Noem's ability to move around funding as she sees fit under a CR.

"There is much more we must do to rein in DHS, which I will continue to press for. But the hard truth is that Democrats must win political power to enact the kind of accountability we need. I will keep fighting to bring sanity, decency, and due process to immigration enforcement in America. If you believe that we should be putting more of our taxpayer dollars towards health care and that our immigration enforcement should be focused on actual criminals instead of tear-gassing American children, then we need to speak up again and again-and we must take our fight to the ballot box."

Throughout negotiations, Democrats fought to protect the programs and investments that matter most to working families across the country. The more than $1.2 trillion package:

• PROTECTS FAMILIES' FINANCES: Invests in programs people count on every day-and rejects President Trump and House Republicans' cruel cuts that would have taken money out of families' pockets.
  • BOOSTS CHILD CARE FUNDING: Invests $85 million more in the Child Care and Development Block Grant and $85 million more in Head Start to help families find and afford the child care and early education they need.
  • PROTECTS PELL GRANTS: Rejects President Trump's push to cut the maximum Pell Grant by more than $1000 and protects the full $7,395 maximum grant.
  • KEEPS AMERICANS HOUSED: Rejects President Trump's plan to slash rental assistance and put over 10 million Americans at risk of losing their housing and ending up on the streets-and instead boosts funding for rental assistance to keep Americans housed.
  • PROTECTS ENERGY SAVINGS: Provides $20 million more for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program to help working class families afford to heat and cool their homes.
  • PROTECTS WORKERS' WALLETS: Rejects President Trump's push to cut funding for key agencies that address wage theft, unsafe workplaces, and violations of workers' rights.
• BOOSTS NIH & MEDICAL RESEARCH FUNDING: Rejects President Trump's plan to slash NIH funding by 40% and instead invests $415 million more into NIH research to discover new, lifesaving treatments and cures. Prevents NIH from implementing OMB's directive to fund more multi-year research grants in one lump sum, which would have resulted in thousands fewer grants being awarded-and thousands fewer chances of discovering the next medical breakthrough.
• REJECTS TRUMP'S HEALTH CUTS: Rejects over $33 billion in proposed cuts to HHS.
  • REJECTS SUBSTANCE USE & MENTAL HEALTH CUTS: Rejects President Trump's proposed $1 billion cut to substance use and mental health funding-and instead provides additional resources to help communities tackle the opioid crisis and connect Americans to mental health services.
  • PROTECTS PUBLIC HEALTH FUNDING: Rejects President Trump's proposed 50% cut to CDC-instead sustaining essentially flat funding for the agency-and provides targeted funding increases for key pandemic preparedness programs.
  • INVESTS IN WOMEN'S HEALTH:Protects funding for Title X and the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, boosts funding for maternal health, and funds a new menopause initiative.
• INVESTS IN STUDENTS' FUTURES: Rejects $12 billion in proposed cuts at the Department of Education and instead strengthens investments in education while protecting key programs Trump sought to scrap.
• INVESTS IN MILITARY FAMILIES: Fully funds the 3.8% across-the-board pay raise for servicemembers, as well as the junior enlisted pay raise, and makes new investments to support military families.
• INVESTS IN AMERICA'S NATIONAL SECURITY: Rejects proposals to cut off investments in security partnerships with America's allies and delivers new funding to modernize our defenses.
• REJECTS EXTREME REPUBLICAN RIDERS: Rejects 85+ poison pill riders included in House Republicans' draft bills.
• REASSERTS CONGRESSIONAL CONTROL: Prevents President Trump and his cabinet secretaries from unilaterally deciding how to spend taxpayer dollars. Right now, the Trump administration has significantly more discretion to decide how to allocate federal funding thanks to Republicans' yearlong continuing resolution for fiscal year 2025, which failed to provide detailed funding directives for hundreds of programs and turned over decision-making power to the executive branch to fill in the gaps itself. These bills provide detailed directives about how funds are to be spent, and they strengthen key oversight, accountability, and transparency measures to help ensure that Congress-not the executive branch-decides how taxpayer dollars are spent.

Text of the four-bill package is available HERE.

The joint explanatory statement front matter is available HERE.

Defense

Bill Summary

Joint Explanatory Statement

Homeland Security

Bill Summary

Joint Explanatory Statement

Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies

Bill Summary

Joint Explanatory Statement

Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies

Bill Summary

Joint Explanatory Statement

***An online version of this release is available here***

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