A Status Update on the Fiscal Year 2026 Funding Process: House Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill

September 11, 2025

Genesis Santiago

Last month, ACCT reported on the Senate version of the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (LHHS) fiscal year (FY) 2026 appropriations bill. The overall theme in the Senate LHHS appropriations bill is that it struck a different tone from President Donald Trump’s budget request by proposing to level-fund or slightly cut programs instead of following the program eliminations the Trump administration proposed.

As of this week, the House Appropriations Committee passed its LHHS appropriations bill. Unlike the Senate version, the House bill includes similar funding levels to the President’s request, which amounts to a $12 billion cut for the Department of Education and a $4 billion cut to the Department of Labor; yet the allocations by individual programs differ from the President’s budget proposal.

Quick Highlights of the House LHHS Appropriations bill.

Eliminates funding for:

Adult Basic Education (ABE)
Child Care Access Means Parents In School (CCAMPIS)
Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant (SEOG)
All but two Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) programs, including the Basic Needs for Postsecondary Students Grant and the Post-Secondary Student Success Grants (PSSG)

Reduces funding for:

Federal Work Study (FWS) by $451,131,000, nearly 37 percent
Strengthening Institutions Program (SIP) by $5 million

Level funds:

Maximum Pell award at $7,395
Strengthening Community College Training Grant (SCCTG) at $65 million
Apprenticeships at $285 million
TRIO at $1.191 billion
Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR-UP) at $388 thousand.
Head Start at $12.3 billion

Increases funding for:

Career and Technical Education (CTE) state grants by $25 million.
Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) by $6 million
Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) by $5 million
Native American-Serving Nontribal Institutions (NASNTIs) by $1 million

The justification behind eliminating funding for programs like CCAMPIS, ABE, SEOG, and FIPSE is to end programs that appear duplicative. For instance, the House LHHS bill states that CCAMPIS is to be eliminated as its functions are seen in programs like Head Start and the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), yet the House LHHS bill proposed to level-fund both Head Start and the CCDBG, creating a net funding decrease in the childcare supports despite this justification. The justification also neglects to take into account the already existing higher demand than funds available for these two programs and the fact that CCAMPIS is tailored to support the unique needs of parenting students who may be working and studying at the same time, needing more flexible, non-traditional child care hours and proximity to their classes.

Overlaps with the Senate LHHS Appropriations Bill

Given that both House and Senate FY 26 LHHS appropriations products have to eventually look identical for passage, it is useful to examine the areas where these two appropriations bills agree. Overall, both the House and Senate proposals aim to level fund TRIO, Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP), the Strengthening Community College Training Grants (SCCTG), and apprenticeship programs; all of which President Trump proposed to eliminate in his budget. Specifically, for SCCTG and the apprenticeship programs, the President asked to eliminate these programs in favor of consolidating them to exist as part of the broader Make America Skilled Again block grant. Regarding the Maximum Pell, the House and Senate’s appropriations bills seek to maintain the amount of $7,395, while President Trump requested to cut the Maximum Pell award by $1,685. While the rejection of the proposed cut is welcomed news, ACCT continues advocating for at least a $200 increase to the maximum Pell award in order to maintain the purchasing power of the Pell grant. Furthermore, both the House and Senate appropriations bills call for a $5 million cut to the Strengthening Institutions Program (SIP), again, a program that President Trump requested the elimination of funding for. While we are glad to see that Appropriators in both chambers rejected the elimination of this critical program for many of our colleges, it is still disappointing to see the SIP program be the recipient of further cuts after receiving a $10 million cut in FY 24, even when the demand and need for the program continues to rise given the number of under resourced institutions that serve a high number of low income students and Pell recipients among the community college sector.

While the final appropriations legislation is still in development, these similarities between the House and Senate appropriations bills lead us to predict that SIP is not on track for elimination, but it will suffer a $5 million cut for FY 26 while TRIO, GEAR UP, Maximum Pell, SCCTG, and apprenticeship program would be potentially level-funded despite the President’s request for the funding cuts and elimination of these programs.

Overlaps with the Senate LHHS Appropriations Bill and the President’s Budget

When considering the funding areas where President Trump, the Senate, and the House agree, at first glance, it seems like they all aim to level fund the following Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) programs:

Strengthening Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian-serving Institutions (ANNHIs)
Strengthening Predominantly Black Institutions (PBIs)
Strengthening Asian American- and Native American Pacific Islander-serving Institutions (AANAPISIs)
Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs)

All the while, the House LHHS FY 26 appropriations bill increased funding for Strengthening Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Strengthening Tribally Controlled Colleges (TCCUs), and Strengthening Native American-Serving Nontribal Institutions (NASNTIs) programs, while the Senate and President Trump proposed to level fund these grants.

Under typical circumstances, agreement amongst the President’s budget request, the House, and the Senate’s LHHS bills would make a strong case for anticipating that those provisions would end up in the final appropriations product. However, on September 10, 2025, the Trump administration announced that it would terminate Congressionally appropriated discretionary funding for new awards for FY 25 and non-competing continuations for Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) programs, with the justification that, according to the Trump administration, these grants are racially and ethnically discriminatory. This would apply specifically to ANNHIs, PBIs, AANAPISIs, and HSIs grants. The administration has stated its intent to reprogram these funds to grants it deems non-discriminatory.

What this situation demonstrates is that there is limited guarantee that the Trump administration would execute Congress’s intentions, even if President Trump’s budget request did, at one point, signal support for MSI programs.

What makes the administration’s decision to reprogram funding possible is that Fiscal Year 2025 funding has been authorized via a Continuing Resolution (CR) that lacked program-by-program funding allocations in many cases. This gave the Administration more leeway to justify moving funding around. Although typically, prior Administrations operating under a CR honored the funding allocations provided by Congress in its most recent Funding bill report, in this case the FY 24 committee report.

As for FY 26, Congress usually outlines funding at the programmatic level in its appropriations report rather than in the statutory language of the appropriations bill itself, and it has been no different so far in this process. This distinction in lawmaking means that traditionally, funding amounts found in appropriations bill reports have been followed by Presidential Administrations, interpreting them as instructions and Congressional intent from the branch of government that has the power of the purse, however, given the recent justifications around “statutory authority” when it comes to the defunding of MSI programs in FY 25, it is unclear if the Administration would plan to leverage flexibility to interpret and implement funding laws to align with its agenda and ignore funding allocations found in the committee report.

Looking Ahead

The next step for both the House and Senate appropriations bills is to reach the floor in their respective chambers for a full vote. Once each chamber passes its version of the bill, both the House and Senate have to take their proposals and conference them into one singular piece of legislation, which will then be voted on by each chamber. If passed in both the House and the Senate, the bill is sent to the President to become law. While this is typically the regular process, we do not expect either chamber to take their LHHS bill to the floor as a standalone proposal. It is more likely that the LHHS will be wrapped in a larger funding package eventually, but before reaching that point, Congress will need to agree on a new Continuing Resolution to keep the government funded beyond this month.

Clearly, the appropriations process involves many steps, all of which are bound by the deadline of September 30th, the end of the fiscal year. The failure to sign an appropriations bill or package into law will result in a government shutdown that can only be averted with the passage of a Continuing Resolution, which funds the government at the previous fiscal year’s funding levels.

Even though there are provisions to be thankful for, such as the agreement to level-fund SCCTG (please take a look at ACCT’s article on SCCTG and the additional federal support this program needs), the cuts that the House appropriations LHHS bill is proposing are undoubtedly concerning. Critical programs are in jeopardy. As these funding bills are going through the legislative process, ACCT asks you to take action by participating in our Action Campaign and urging your member of Congress to reject eliminations and cuts to these critical programs.

Table 1.0: Summary of FY24/25 Funding Levels, the President's Budget Request, Senate LHHS Appropriations Bill, and House LHHS Appropriations Bill