Contents

• Introduction
• Report Roadmap and Useful Terminology
• Scope of the Report
• Important Budget Concepts
• Mandatory vs. Discretionary Budget Authority
• Total Budget Authority Provided in the Bill vs. Total Budget Authority Available in the Fiscal Year
• Recent Action Related to LHHS Appropriations
• FY2026 Annual LHHS Appropriations
• FY2026 Further Consolidated Appropriations Act
• FY2026 Continuing Appropriations
• Prior Congressional Action on an FY2026 LHHS Bill
• FY2026 LHHS Action in the House (H.R. 5304)
• FY2026 LHHS Action in the Senate (S. 2624)
• FY2026 President's Budget Request
• Conclusion of FY2025 Appropriations Process
• Overarching LHHS Considerations for the FY2026 Appropriations Cycle
• Determining FY2025 Funding Levels for Certain Accounts and Programs
• FY2026 President's Budget Submission Level of Detail and Structure
• Impoundment Control Act Enacted FY2026 and FY2027 Rescissions to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB)
• Selected Appropriations and Related Issues Addressed by the FY2026 LHHS Omnibus
• Calculation and Display of Funding, and Treatment of Congressional Report Language
• Dollars and Percentages in this Report
• Report Language and Incorporation by Reference
• LHHS Funding by Bill Title (FY2024-FY2026)
• FY2026 LHHS Congressionally Directed Spending (CDS) and Community Project Funding (CPF)
• Department of Labor (DOL)
• About DOL
• FY2026 Caveats
• FY2026 DOL Appropriations Overview
• Selected DOL Highlights
• Employment and Training Administration (ETA)
• Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)
• Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB)
• Labor-Related General Provisions
• Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
• About HHS
• Proposed FY2026 HHS Reorganization
• FY2026 Caveats
• FY2026 HHS Appropriations Overview
• Special Public Health Funding Mechanisms
• Public Health Service Evaluation Tap
• Prevention and Public Health Fund (PPHF)
• 21^st Century Cures Act, NIH Innovation Account
• Selected HHS Highlights by Agency
• Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)
• National Institutes of Health (NIH)
• Administration for Children and Families (ACF)
• Restrictions Related to Certain Controversial Issues
• Department of Education (ED)
• About ED
• FY2026 Caveats
• FY2026 ED Appropriations Overview
• Selected ED Highlights
• Education for the Disadvantaged
• School Improvement
• Innovation and Improvement
• Institute of Education Sciences
• Departmental Management
• Additional ED Issues for FY2026
• Related Agencies
• FY2026 Caveats
• FY2026 Related Agencies Appropriations Overview
• Selected Related Agencies Highlights
• SSA Limitation on Administrative Expenses (LAE)
• Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS)
• Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)
• National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)
• Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB)

Summary

This report offers an overview of the FY2026 Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies (LHHS) appropriations bill. This bill includes all accounts funded through the annual appropriations process at the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and U.S. Department of Education (ED). It also provides annual appropriations for most agencies within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), with certain exceptions (e.g., the Food and Drug Administration), and for more than a dozen related agencies (including the Social Security Administration).

This report primarily focuses on regular FY2026 LHHS discretionary funding enacted during the annual appropriations process. Totals generally do not include emergency-designated funds, except as noted. In general, no emergency-designated funds were proposed or enacted for LHHS programs and activities in FY2026; a limited amount of emergency-designated appropriations were provided to LHHS in FY2024 and FY2025.

FY2026 Appropriations

FY2026 LHHS Omnibus: On February 3, 2026, the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026 (FY2026 LHHS omnibus; H.R. 7148; P.L. 119-75) was signed into law by the President, providing full-year annual appropriations for LHHS (Division B). Annual discretionary LHHS appropriations totaled $226.1 billion (0.4% less than FY2024 enacted, 0.3% more than FY2025, and 29.9% more than the FY2026 President's request). It also provided $1.513 trillion in mandatory funding, for a combined LHHS total of $1.739 trillion. The distribution of discretionary funding was as follows:

• DOL: $13.7 billion, 0.2% less than FY2024 and 0.5% more than FY2025.
• HHS: $116.4 billion, 0.9% less than FY2024 and 0.2% more than FY2025.
• ED: $79.0 billion, 0.1% less than FY2024 and 0.3% more than FY2025.
• Related Agencies: $17.1 billion, 1.4% more than FY2024 and 1.0% more than FY2025.

FY2026 Continuing Resolutions: At the start of the fiscal year (October 1, 2025), a funding lapse commenced, resulting in a government shutdown that affected many LHHS programs and activities; that lapse ended on November 12, 2025, with the enactment of temporary LHHS funding in a continuing resolution (CR) (Division A of H.R. 5371; P.L. 119-37). The CR funded LHHS programs and activities (and the activities under the purview of several other appropriations acts) through January 30, 2026. Discretionary programs generally were funded at the same rate, and under the same conditions, as in FY2025; whereas appropriated entitlements were funded at their current law levels. The CR also included one provision that was specific to LHHS (§155). When annual appropriations for LHHS were not yet enacted at the time the CR expired, a second funding lapse commenced, ending with the enactment of full-year appropriations on February 3.

FY2026 LHHS House Action: On September 9, 2025, the House Appropriations Committee voted to report its version of the FY2026 LHHS bill (35-28). The measure was subsequently reported on September 11, as H.R. 5304 (H.Rept. 119-271). As reported, the House committee bill would have provided $202.2 billion in discretionary LHHS funds (10.9% less than FY2024 enacted, 10.3% less than FY2025, and $16.1 billion more than the FY2026 President's request). In addition, it would have provided an estimated $1.513 trillion in mandatory funding, for a combined LHHS total of $1.715 trillion. The distribution of proposed discretionary funding was as follows:

• DOL: $9.6 billion, 30.0% less than FY2024 and 29.6% less than FY2025.
• HHS: $109.5 billion, 6.8% less than FY2024 and 5.7% less than FY2025.
• ED: $66.9 billion, 15.4% less than FY2024 and 15.1% less than FY2025.
• Related Agencies: $16.3 billion, 3.3% less than FY2024 and 3.8% less than FY2025.

FY2026 LHHS Senate Action: On July 31, 2025, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted to report its version of the FY2026 LHHS bill (26-3). The measure was subsequently reported that same day as S. 2587 (S.Rept. 119-55). As reported, the bill would have provided $226.4 billion in discretionary LHHS funds (0.2% less than comparable FY2024 enacted levels, 0.5% more than FY2025, and 30.1% more than the FY2026 President's request). In addition, it would have provided an estimated $1.513 trillion in mandatory funding, for a combined LHHS total of $1.740 trillion. The distribution of proposed discretionary funding was as follows:

• DOL: $13.7 billion, 0.2% less than FY2024 and 0.5% more than FY2025.
• HHS: $116.6 billion, 0.7% less than FY2024 and 0.4% more than FY2025.
• ED: $79.0 billion, 0.1% less than FY2024 and 0.3% more than FY2025.
• Related Agencies: $17.1 billion, 1.8% more than FY2024 and 1.3% more than FY2025.

FY2026 President's Budget Request: On May 2, President Trump submitted to Congress an outline of his discretionary funding priorities for FY2026. Additional documents related to the budget request were submitted in the weeks that followed, including congressional justifications for individual departments and agencies. The President requested $174.1 billion in discretionary funding for accounts funded by the LHHS bill (23.3% less than FY2024 enacted and 22.8% less than FY2025). In addition, the President requested $1.513 trillion in annually appropriated mandatory funding, for an LHHS total of $1.687 trillion. The distribution of requested discretionary funding was as follows:

• DOL: $9.0 billion, 33.9% less than FY2024 and 33.5% less than FY2025.
• HHS: $84.0 billion, 28.4% less than FY2024 and 27.6% less than FY2025.
• ED: $66.7 billion, 15.6% less than FY2024 and 15.3% less than FY2025.
• Related Agencies: $14.3 billion, 15.0% less than FY2024 and 15.4% less than FY2025.

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Introduction

This report provides an overview of FY2026 enacted and proposed appropriations for accounts traditionally funded in the appropriations bill for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies (LHHS). This bill provides discretionary and mandatory appropriations to three federal departments: the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the U.S. Department of Education (ED). In addition, the bill provides annual appropriations for more than a dozen related agencies, including the Social Security Administration (SSA). For FY2026, LHHS appropriations were enacted in Division B of the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026 (FY2026 LHHS omnibus; H.R. 7148, P.L. 119-75).

Discretionary funds represent roughly one-eighth of the total funds appropriated in the annual LHHS bill. Nevertheless, the LHHS bill is typically the largest single source of discretionary funds for domestic nondefense federal programs among the various appropriations bills. (The Defense appropriations bill is the largest source of discretionary funds among all federal programs.) Because the appropriations process both provides and controls discretionary funding (concepts discussed further in the "Mandatory vs. Discretionary Budget Authority" section), the bulk of this report is focused on these funds.

The LHHS bill often includes contentious issues, likely because of the size of its funding and the scope of its programs, as well as various related social policy issues addressed in the bill, such as restrictions on the use of federal funds for abortion and for research on human embryos, stem cells, and gun violence.

Congressional clients may consult the LHHS experts list in CRS Report R42638, Appropriations: CRS Experts for information on which analysts to contact at the Congressional Research Service (CRS) with questions on specific agencies and programs funded in the LHHS bill.

Report Roadmap and Useful Terminology

This report is divided into multiple sections. The opening sections explain the scope of the LHHS bill (and hence, the scope of this report), the important terminology and concepts that carry throughout the report, major recent congressional actions on LHHS appropriations, overarching issues that affected the FY2026 cycle, and an explanation of how CRS calculates the numbers in this report and treats report language. This is followed by a high-level summary and analysis of enacted appropriations for FY2026 compared to FY2024 and FY2025 funding levels, and those initially proposed for FY2026. The report then provides overview sections for each of the major titles of the bill: DOL, HHS, ED, and Related Agencies (RA). These sections discuss selected highlights from FY2026 enacted funding levels compared to FY2024 and FY2025, as well as those initially proposed for FY2026. (Note that the distribution of funds is sometimes illustrated by figures, the depicted amounts for which in all cases are based on the FY2026 enacted LHHS appropriations.¹)

The Appendix provides a summary of budget enforcement activities for FY2026 that are relevant to LHHS. This includes information on mandatory funding sequestration pursuant to the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 (P.L. 119-177; BBEDCA), as amended, discretionary funding budget enforcement in the absence of statutory discretionary spending limits or a budget resolution, and current-year funding levels.

Scope of the Report

This report focuses on appropriations to agencies and accounts that are subject to the jurisdiction of the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies subcommittees of the House and Senate appropriations committees (i.e., accounts traditionally funded via the LHHS bill). Department "totals" provided in this report do not include funding for accounts or agencies that are traditionally funded by appropriations bills under the jurisdiction of other subcommittees.

The LHHS bill provides appropriations for the following federal departments and agencies:

• the U.S. Department of Labor;
• most agencies at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, except for the Food and Drug Administration (funded through the Agriculture appropriations bill), the Indian Health Service (funded through the Interior-Environment appropriations bill), and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (also funded through the Interior-Environment appropriations bill);
• the U.S. Department of Education; and
• more than a dozen related agencies, including the Social Security Administration, the Corporation for National and Community Service (sometimes referred to as AmeriCorps), the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Railroad Retirement Board.

Funding totals displayed in this report do not reflect amounts provided outside of the annual appropriations process. Certain direct spending programs, such as Social Security and parts of Medicare, receive funding directly from their authorizing statutes; such funds are not reflected in the totals provided in this report because they are not provided through the annual appropriations process (see related discussion in the "Mandatory vs. Discretionary Budget Authority" section).

Important Budget Concepts

Mandatory vs. Discretionary Budget Authority²

The LHHS bill includes both discretionary and mandatory budget authority. While all discretionary spending is provided through the annual appropriations process, only a portion of mandatory budget authority is provided in appropriations measures.

Mandatory programs funded through the annual appropriations process are commonly referred to as appropriated entitlements. In general, appropriators have little discretion over the amounts provided for appropriated entitlements; rather, the authorizing statute controls the program parameters (e.g., eligibility rules, benefit levels) that entitle certain recipients to payments. If Congress does not appropriate the money necessary to meet these commitments, entitled recipients (e.g., individuals, states, or other entities) may have legal recourse.³ Examples of appropriated entitlements include Medicaid and the Supplemental Security Income program.

Most mandatory spending is not provided through the annual appropriations process, but rather through budget authority provided by the program's authorizing statute (e.g., Social Security benefits payments). The funding amounts in this report do not include budget authority provided outside of the appropriations process. Instead, the amounts reflect only those funds, discretionary and mandatory, that are provided through appropriations acts.

As displayed in this report, mandatory amounts displayed for the FY2026 President's budget submission reflect current-law (or current services) estimates; they generally do not include the President's proposed changes to a mandatory spending program's authorizing statute that might affect total spending. (In general, such proposals are usually excluded from this report, as they typically would be enacted in authorizing legislation. Moreover, the FY2026 President's budget generally did not include any such proposals.)

The report focuses most closely on discretionary funding because discretionary funding receives the bulk of congressional attention during the appropriations process. (While the LHHS bill includes more mandatory funding than discretionary funding, the appropriators generally have less discretion in adjusting mandatory funding levels than discretionary funding levels.)

Mandatory spending is subject to budget enforcement processes that include sequestration. In general, sequestration involves largely across-the-board reductions that are made to certain categories of mandatory funding after it has been enacted, including some of the spending in the LHHS bill. This is discussed further in the Appendix.

Total Budget Authority Provided in the Bill vs. Total Budget Authority Available in the Fiscal Year

Budget authority is the amount of money a federal agency is legally authorized to commit or spend. Appropriations bills may include budget authority that becomes available in the current fiscal year, in future fiscal years, or some combination. Amounts that become available in future fiscal years are typically referred to as advance appropriations. An additional related concept, forward funding, applies to appropriations that become available during the last quarter of the current fiscal year and continue into at least one future fiscal year. These delayed periods of availability are intended to prevent funding shortfalls late in the fiscal year or to mitigate effects of a funding gap the following year. More specifically, for the largest ED formula grant programs to states and the DOL vocational training programs, a forward funding schedule is intended to enable significant obligations to occur during the summer for activities in the upcoming school year.

Unless otherwise specified, appropriations levels displayed in this report refer to the total amount of budget authority provided in an appropriations bill (i.e., "total in the bill"), regardless of the year in which the funding becomes available.⁴ In some cases, the report breaks out current-year appropriations (i.e., the amount of budget authority available for obligation in a given fiscal year, regardless of the year in which it was first appropriated).⁵

As the annual appropriations process unfolds, the amount of current-year budget authority is to be measured against 302(b) allocation ceilings (budget enforcement caps for appropriations subcommittees that traditionally emerge following the budget resolution process, see Appendix). The process of measuring appropriations against these spending ceilings takes into account budget authority for the current fiscal year, regardless of when it was enacted, and is subject to scorekeeping adjustments, which are made by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to reflect conventions and special instructions of Congress.⁶ Unless otherwise specified, appropriations levels displayed in this report do not reflect additional scorekeeping adjustments. (Those scorekeeping adjustments are displayed at the bottom of Table 2)

Recent Action Related to LHHS Appropriations

This section provides a brief legislative history and topline funding totals for enacted FY2026 LHHS appropriations, prior congressional and President's budget proposals for FY2026, and LHHS appropriations enacted for FY2025.

FY2026 Annual LHHS Appropriations

Table 1 provides a timeline of major legislative actions for full-year LHHS proposals, which are discussed in greater detail below.

FY2026 Further Consolidated Appropriations Act

Full-year FY2026 appropriations for LHHS were enacted on February 3, 2026, when the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026 (H.R. 7148; P.L. 119-75) was signed into law by the President. The FY2026 LHHS omnibus provided full-year appropriations for five of the annual appropriations acts in Divisions A-F (no Division C was included in the act), with LHHS appropriations being provided in Division B. Prior to its enactment, the final version of the measure was approved by the Senate on January 30 (71-29), and the House on February 3 (217-214).

See Figure 1 for a breakdown of FY2026 discretionary and mandatory LHHS appropriations enacted in the FY2026 LHHS omnibus.⁷ Annual discretionary LHHS appropriations totaled about $226 billion. This amount is 0.4% less than FY2024 enacted, 0.3% more than FY2025, and 29.9% more than the FY2026 President's budget request. The omnibus also provided $1.513 trillion in mandatory funding, for a combined LHHS total of $1.739 trillion.

Figure 1. FY2026 Enacted LHHS Appropriations

Source: Amounts in this figure are generally drawn from or calculated based on data contained in the explanatory statement accompanying the FY2026 LHHS omnibus (P.L. 119-75) available in the Congressional Record, vol. 172, no. 15, book II, January 22, 2026, pp. H1590-H1660. Enacted totals for FY2026 do not include contingent or indefinite discretionary appropriations. For consistency with source materials, amounts in this figure generally do not reflect mandatory spending sequestration, where applicable, nor do they reflect any transfers or reprogramming of funds pursuant to executive authorities. CRS calculations do, however, include LHHS funding provided to HHS pursuant to the 21st Century Cures Act (P.L. 114-255), as amended. Notes: Details may not add to totals due to rounding. Amounts in this figure (1) reflect all budget authority appropriated in the bill, regardless of the year in which funds become available (i.e., totals do not include advances from prior-year appropriations, but do include advances for subsequent years provided in this bill); (2) have generally not been adjusted to reflect scorekeeping; (3) comprise only those funds provided for agencies and accounts subject to the jurisdiction of the LHHS subcommittees of the House and Senate appropriations committees; and (4) do not include appropriations that occur outside of appropriations bills or that are emergency-designated.

FY2026 Continuing Appropriations

Congress and the President did not reach agreement on full-year or temporary FY2026 appropriations for LHHS prior to the start of the fiscal year. On October 1, 2025, a funding lapse commenced, resulting in a government shutdown affecting many LHHS programs and activities.⁸

The funding lapse concluded with the enactment of an FY2026 continuing resolution (CR), which was signed into law on November 12, 2025 (Division A of H.R. 5371; P.L. 119-37). The CR provided continuing appropriations for LHHS through January 30, 2026. H.R. 5371 was introduced by Representative Cole, the House Appropriations Committee Chairman, on September 16, 2025. It initially passed the House on September 19, 2025 (217-212). The Senate voted not to invoke cloture on various motions related to proceeding to the measure on several occasions over the next several weeks,⁹ until it voted to invoke cloture on November 9 (60-40). The Senate subsequently passed the measure with an amendment on November 10 (60-40). The House agreed to the Senate amendment on November 12 (222-209), and the measure was signed into law by the President later that same day.

In general, the FY2026 CR funded discretionary programs at the same rate, and under the same conditions, as in FY2025. Appropriated entitlements were funded at their current law levels.¹⁰ The CR also included one provision that was specific to LHHS accounts or related activities (§155 on the Head Start program).¹¹

When annual appropriations for LHHS were not yet enacted at the time the CR expired, a second funding lapse commenced, ending with the enactment of full-year appropriations on February 3.

Prior Congressional Action on an FY2026 LHHS Bill

FY2026 LHHS Action in the House (H.R. 5304)

On September 9, 2025, the House Appropriations Committee voted to report its version of the FY2026 LHHS bill (35-28). The measure was subsequently reported on September 11, 2025, as H.R. 5304 (H.Rept. 119-271).

The House committee bill would have provided $202.2 billion in discretionary LHHS funds, a 10.9% decrease from FY2024 enacted levels and a 10.3% decrease from FY2025. This amount was 16.1% more than the FY2024 President's request. In addition, the House floor bill would have provided an estimated $1.513 trillion in mandatory funding, for a combined total of $1.715 trillion for LHHS as a whole.

FY2026 LHHS Action in the Senate (S. 2624)

On July 31, 2025, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted to report its version of the FY2026 LHHS bill (26-3). The measure was subsequently reported that same day as S. 2587 (S.Rept. 119-55).

The Senate committee bill would have provided $226.4 billion in discretionary LHHS funds, a 0.2% decrease from FY2024 enacted levels and 0.5% more than FY2025. This amount was 30.1% more than the FY2026 President's request. In addition, the Senate committee bill would have provided an estimated $1.513 trillion in mandatory funding, for a combined total of $1.740 trillion for LHHS as a whole.

FY2026 President's Budget Request

On May 2, President Trump submitted to Congress an outline of his discretionary funding priorities for FY2026. Additional documents related to the budget request were submitted in the weeks that followed, including congressional justifications for individual departments and agencies. The FY2026 budget submission occurred during a presidential transition year—from the presidency of Joseph R. Biden to Donald J. Trump on January 20, 2025. Although the statutory deadline for the budget submission to Congress is not later than the first Monday in February (P.L. 67-13, as amended), recent Presidents have not submitted detailed budget proposals until April or May of their first year in office (although they usually advise Congress regarding the general contours of their economic and budgetary policies in special messages submitted to Congress prior to that submission). This delay allows time to prepare a proposal that reflects the priorities of the new Administration.¹²

The President requested $174.1 billion in discretionary funding for accounts funded by the LHHS bill (23.3% less than FY2024 enacted and 22.8% less than FY2025). In addition, the President requested $1.513 trillion in annually appropriated mandatory funding, for a combined total of $1.687 trillion for LHHS as a whole.

Conclusion of FY2025 Appropriations Process

Full-year FY2025 appropriations for LHHS were enacted on March 15, 2025, when the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025 (H.R. 1968; P.L. 119-4; hereinafter, "FY2025 full-year CR") was signed into law by the President. H.R. 1968 was introduced by Representative Tom Cole, the House Appropriations Committee Chairman, on March 10, 2025. The measure was approved by the House on March 11 (217–213), and the Senate on March 14 (54-46).

Annual discretionary LHHS appropriations in the FY2025 full-year CR were estimated in later congressional source documents for this report to total $225.4 billion. This amount was 0.7% less than FY2024 enacted and 29.5% more than the FY2026 President's budget request. The omnibus also provided $1.225 trillion in mandatory funding, for a combined LHHS total of $1.481 trillion. (Note that these totals are based only on amounts of non-emergency appropriations and do not include emergency-designated or supplemental funds, which were provided in addition to the annual appropriations.)

Overarching LHHS Considerations for the FY2026 Appropriations Cycle

A number of circumstances affected the FY2026 cycle, such as lack of publicly available data on final FY2025 funding levels for certain accounts and programs, the level of detail in and structure of the FY2026 President's budget submission, and the cancellations of previously enacted LHHS funding in a rescissions bill. This section provides background related to these issues. It concludes by summarizing how the FY2026 omnibus addressed some of them and highlights some new provisions that were included related to staffing, grants management, and oversight practices by LHHS agencies. (A discussion of FY2026 budget enforcement issues relevant to LHHS is in the Appendix).

Determining FY2025 Funding Levels for Certain Accounts and Programs

As summarized above, FY2025 appropriations for LHHS were enacted in the form of full-year continuing appropriations. Full-year CRs generally fund discretionary programs at the same level and under the same conditions as the prior fiscal year, and fund annually appropriated entitlements at their current-law levels. This general funding structure may be subject to certain enumerated exceptions that apply to specified purposes ("anomalies").¹³ In addition, accounts with appropriations in indefinite amounts, or that have offsets such as fees and rescissions, may also have different calculated funding levels than the prior year. Consequently, FY2025 funding for certain accounts did not uniformly match comparable funding provided in the FY2024 LHHS appropriations act.

In addition, funding enacted in a full-year CR is usually not accompanied by an explanatory statement, even when earlier versions of LHHS annual appropriations bills for that fiscal year were accompanied by committee reports. In the case of FY2025, there was earlier report language accompanying the FY2025 congressional LHHS proposals, but no final explanatory statement was provided.¹⁴ This meant that Congress's most specific requirements for the allocation of FY2025 funding appeared in the full CR itself, with no funding allocations or directives at greater levels of specificity than the statute (e.g., the program, project, or activity level when not specified in statute).¹⁵

For much of the FY2026 appropriations cycle, public sources of information about the funding distributions made by LHHS agencies subsequent to the FY2025 full-year CR's enactment were incomplete or inconsistently available. The operating plans required by Section 1113 of the CR, which were to report the amount of funding by program, project, or activity (or greater level of detail if applicable) for ED, HHS, DOL, SSA, the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), were due to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees on May 15, 2025. Of these, DOL and SSA publicly released their operating plans, but those for HHS, ED, CNCS, and CPB generally were not posted on Office of Management and Budget (OMB) or agency websites until many months after the start of FY2026.¹⁶ In addition, the FY2025 column in the FY2026 congressional justifications, which usually would list amounts at the program, project, and activity level, did not provide this level of detail for much of HHS and ED; or in some cases, it aligned the account structure with administration proposals and not enacted funding.¹⁷ This made it difficult to compare amounts across fiscal or budget years using publicly available sources.

During the FY2026 appropriations cycle, the only comprehensive congressional source of FY2025 LHHS funding for lines within appropriations accounts was the "Comparative Statement of New Budget Authority" table in the House Appropriations Committee report accompanying its version of the FY2026 LHHS bill (H.Rept. 119-271). According to page 315 of that report, the sources of information for the "FY2025 Estimate" column were "FY2025 Operating Plans and other available information." Though the table generally listed amounts for each LHHS account, funding amounts for numerous programs and lines at the sub-account level were not listed.

For this reason, because this CRS report uses the House Appropriations Committee table as its source for FY2026, the FY2025 table headings in the report indicate that they are "estimates."

FY2026 President's Budget Submission Level of Detail and Structure

The submission of the President's budget request formally initiates the congressional budget process and informs Congress of the President's recommended spending levels for agencies and programs relative to prior-year funding.¹⁸ Typically, many of the proposals in the President's annual budget recommend changes to laws that govern mandatory spending levels or policies, which are usually established on a multiyear or permanent basis. However, discretionary spending, which is roughly one-third of the federal budget,¹⁹ is decided and controlled each fiscal year through the annual appropriations process. While Congress is not required to adopt the President's proposals or recommendations for either discretionary or mandatory spending, the budget submission is an important source of information for the annual appropriations process on the funding allocations that are envisioned by the Administration for accounts, programs, projects, and activities.

On May 2, 2025, President Trump submitted to Congress an outline of his discretionary funding priorities for FY2026.²⁰ This preliminary document provided early highlights of proposed increases and decreases to numerous programs and entities, including several funded in the LHHS bill. Additional documents related to the budget request were submitted in the weeks that followed, including selected "supplemental materials" (e.g., the Appendix volume of the budget submission) and congressional justifications for individual departments and agencies.²¹ These documents, however, lacked much of the detail and information typically included in the President's budget. As noted in the section above, the FY2025 column in the congressional justifications, which would usually list amounts at the program, project, and activity levels, did not provide this level of detail for much of HHS and ED. The budget submission also often did not include mandatory spending budget proposals.

An additional challenge for understanding the President's budget request was that some of the accompanying congressional justifications for LHHS agencies aligned their account structure with administration proposals to reorganize relevant departments, and not with the account structure used when FY2025 funding was enacted.²² For example, the Administration proposed the creation of a new entity, the Administration for a Health America (AHA) within HHS, which was to combine the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration (SAMHSA), and other HHS programs. In addition, instead of individual congressional justifications for HRSA and SAMHSA, the administration submitted a congressional justification for the proposed AHA. Not all HRSA and SAMHSA programs (either as currently constituted or under the proposed restructure) were included in the AHA budget justification. Moreover, these programs were organized within a proposed agency structure that did not align with the existing HRSA or SAMHSA accounts and offices. This complicated comparing the programs in the reorganization proposal to either prior-year funding levels or the existing HRSA and SAMHSA structure. (For a more detailed discussion of this issue and the proposed HHS reorganization, see the "Proposed FY2026 HHS Reorganization" section of this report.)

For entities that the FY2026 President's budget proposed be restructured, limited information was publicly available during the FY2026 appropriations cycle about how this proposal compared to both the current structure and prior-year funding. The House Appropriations Committee's "Comparative Statement of New Budget Authority" table in its report accompanying its version of the FY2026 LHHS bill (H.Rept. 119-271) generally presented accounts and programs within their FY2025 enacted structure. Thus, page 315 of that committee report cautioned, "Some funding amounts displayed under the 'FY 2026 Request' column are displayed in accordance with the programs and accounts under current law and may not be directly comparable to the display in the FY 2026 budget request submitted by the Office and Management and Budget."

Because this CRS report uses the House Appropriations Committee table as its source for the FY2026 President's request numbers, they generally reflect these accounts and programs within their current structure.

Impoundment Control Act Enacted FY2026 and FY2027 Rescissions to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB)

Enacted funding can be cancelled by a subsequent provision of law that is commonly referred to as a rescission. Rescissions of previously enacted funds are routinely considered and enacted in regular annual appropriations acts, and may offset the cost of new funding provided in that same act. In addition, the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (ICA; P.L. 93-344) provides a mechanism for the President to submit a special message to Congress that proposes a rescission. The ICA also provides special procedures for Congress to consider a rescission bill. For further information, see CRS Report R48432, The Impoundment Control Act of 1974: Background and Congressional Consideration of Rescissions.

A rescission bill was enacted into law on July 24, 2025 (P.L. 119-28). This bill originated as an ICA special message to rescind $9.4 billion in previously enacted funds, including $1.1 billion in FY2026 and FY2027 LHHS advance appropriations for CPB.²³ As advance appropriations for CPB have historically been enacted two years in advance, these funds had been enacted in the FY2024 LHHS omnibus (P.L. 118-47) (for funds available in FY2026) and the FY2025 full-year CR (for funds available in FY2027). The bill did not propose that any CBP funds available for FY2025 be rescinded, which were provided in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023 (P.L. 117-328). The proposed rescissions were introduced as H.R. 4, and passed the House on June 12 (214-212). The Senate amended and passed H.R. 4 on July 17 (51-48); the House agreed to the Senate amendment on July 18.²⁴ (Further background on CPB appropriations-related issues is in the "Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB)" section of this report. See also Table 11 for how these funds were treated in the various proposals and FY2026 LHHS omnibus).

As of the cover date of this report, Congress has not considered any further rescission bills that would affect LHHS appropriations.

Selected Appropriations and Related Issues Addressed by the FY2026 LHHS Omnibus

Ultimately, the FY2026 LHHS omnibus preserved the status quo relative to previous years in terms of the entities and accounts that the law funds. In other words, the law appropriated funding to LHHS entities under their existing structure and generally not within the structure that was proposed in the President's budget.

In addition, the statutory appropriations text for several LHHS accounts in the HHS, ED, and Related Agencies titles of the law includes new provisions that incorporate by reference funding distributions for entities and programs that appear in the act's accompanying explanatory statement. In general, such distributions previously had been made in the explanatory statement alone. (See the explanation of this issue in the "Report Language and Incorporation by Reference" section of this CRS report. Examples of this are noted throughout the remainder of the report.)

Over the course of FY2025, a number of reports circulated about delays in the availability of funding or changes to staffing, grants management, or oversight practices at LHHS agencies. The FY2026 LHHS omnibus included a number of provisions related to these topics. For instance, see the following:

• In FY2025, ED departed from its long-standing practice of making forward funding for certain federal education formula grant funds available to state grantees for obligation and expenditure on July 1, 2025 (their first day of availability).²⁵ The FY2026 LHHS omnibus included a new general provision (§312) requiring the Secretary of Education to award formula grant funding for specified programs "on the date such funds become available for obligation." (For further discussion, see the "Forward Funding for Formula Grant Programs" section of this report.)
• In FY2025, NIH shifted to funding more awards under a multiyear approach that fully funded those grants up front for all years of the project period. Compared to FY2024, NIH awarded fewer individual research grants in FY2025 (despite a similar overall funding level to FY2024).²⁶ The FY2026 LHHS omnibus included a new provision (§240) limiting the total amount of FY2026 NIH funds that can be obligated for multiyear awards to not more than the same amount of funds as in FY2025. (For further discussion, see the "Grants Policy Changes" section of this report.)
• In FY2025, reports suggested there had been delays in awarding funds, as well as terminations for some existing grants at some LHHS agencies.²⁷ The FY2026 LHHS omnibus included new language in a long-standing general provision (§524) about grant notifications to Congress. The revised language requires notifications for "any new or non-competing continuation grant" as well as notifications of the "termination or non-continuation of any grant, including a short description of the reason for the termination or non-continuation."
• In FY2025, reports indicated that several LHHS agencies had initiated substantial staffing reductions. For instance, in March 2025 ED announced the department had "initiated a reduction in force (RIF) impacting nearly 50% of the Department's workforce."²⁸ That same month, HHS announced there would be a "dramatic restructuring" at HHS, including a reduction in the workforce of about 10,000 full-time employees.²⁹ Reportedly, developments related to these reductions, including some reported reinstatements, have been ongoing since that time.³⁰ The FY2026 LHHS omnibus included several new provisions related to federal staffing levels. For instance, the omnibus included provisions requiring agencies to use appropriations to support the staffing levels necessary to fulfill "statutory responsibilities including carrying out programs, projects, and activities" funded in the bill (e.g., Departmental Management or Operating Expenses accounts at DOL, ED, and CNCS, and Section 239 of the HHS general provisions). In addition, the omnibus included a new provision requiring HHS to report to the Appropriations Committees on certain staffing levels (e.g., §228).

This section details the methodology that CRS used to calculate the dollars and percentages used in this report that are detailed in the section, provides background on the status of report language and the enactment of that language by reference via language in the bill, and summarizes total LHHS appropriations by bill title (e.g., DOL, HHS).

Calculation and Display of Funding, and Treatment of Congressional Report Language

This section provides an overview of how CRS calculates the dollars and percentages displayed in this report. It also provides an explanation of appropriations report language and how it may be incorporated by reference as a statutory requirement.

Dollars and Percentages in this Report

Amounts displayed in this report are typically rounded (e.g., to the nearest million, to the nearest billion), as labeled. Dollar and percentage changes discussed in the text are based on unrounded amounts. Unless otherwise specified, appropriations levels displayed in this report refer to the total amount of non-emergency budget authority provided in an appropriations bill (i.e., "total in the bill"), regardless of the year in which the funding becomes available. These totals include, where applicable, full-year non-emergency appropriations provided in continuing resolutions.

Unless otherwise noted, the funding amounts in this report are as follows:

• FY2024 enacted is generally drawn from or calculated based on the explanatory statement accompanying the FY2024 LHHS omnibus (P.L. 118-47) available in the Congressional Record, vol. 170, no. 51, book II, March 22, 2024, pp. H1886-H2070. Some limited exceptions to how funds are displayed (e.g., the FY2024 rescissions to the CNCS National Service Trust) are noted where applicable.
• FY2025 estimate, FY2026 request, and FY2026 House committee are generally drawn from or calculated based on data contained in the House Appropriations Committee report accompanying H.R. 5304 (H.Rept. 119-271). (See the explanation of the FY2025 estimate and FY2026 request columns for additional caveats in the "Overarching LHHS Considerations for the FY2026 Appropriations Cycle" section of this CRS report).
• FY2026 Senate committee is generally drawn from or calculated based on data contained in the Senate Appropriations Committee report accompanying S. 2587 (S.Rept. 119-55).
• FY2026 enacted is generally drawn from or calculated based on data contained in the explanatory statement accompanying the FY2026 LHHS omnibus (P.L. 119-75) available in the Congressional Record, vol. 172, no. 15, book II, January 22, 2026, pp. H1590-H1660.

Emergency-designated LHHS appropriations are generally not included in funding amounts in this report ("Total BA in the Bill"). Such LHHS funds were enacted for FY2024 and FY2025, but were not included in FY2026 enacted or any of the FY2026 proposals. For informational purposes, FY2024 and FY2025 emergency-designated amounts are displayed separately at the bottom of tables throughout the report and not summed in that separate display. Those amounts are based on CRS analysis of the texts of the laws. There are two notable exceptions to this general rule:

• Funding in the "Selected HHS Highlights by Agency" section includes, as noted, certain FY2024 emergency-designated funds that effectively could be used to support regular program operations (i.e., the appropriations law did not limit use of funds to activities associated with a particular disaster or event, such as needs arising from a hurricane). Likewise, Table 6 and Table 7 also break out this emergency funding for regular program operations for relevant HHS operating divisions, accounts, and budget lines. All FY2024 and FY2025 emergency-designated funding (for both regular program operations and specified emergencies) also is included at the bottom of these HHS tables.
• Funding in the Appendix includes all FY2024 and FY2025 emergency-designated funds in the "Adjusted Appropriations" totals, as scored by CBO.

Post-enactment adjustments, such as mandatory spending sequestration (where applicable) or transfers and reprogramming of funds pursuant to executive authorities, are generally not included in this report except as noted.³¹ CRS calculations do, however, include LHHS funding provided to HHS pursuant to the 21^st Century Cures Act (P.L. 114-255), as amended.

Report Language and Incorporation by Reference

In general, the detail tables in this CRS report for the DOL, HHS, ED, and RA titles generally do not distinguish between funding that is provided through bill or statutory text versus funding allocations and directives that are included in accompanying congressional "report language" (and not incorporated by reference). That distinction is made in the discussion of selected issues for each LHHS title that surrounds those tables.

Report language is used by Congress to further specify funding or to communicate a range of directives to the agency. It typically does not have the legal weight of statutory text unless incorporated by reference (discussed in the next paragraph). Each regular appropriations bill reported from committee is usually accompanied by a written committee report, and the final explanatory text may be used to reconcile any differences between those reports.³² For example, earlier report language may address certain issues in ways that are difficult to reconcile harmoniously with the final enacted text. In these instances, the explanatory text normally seeks to clarify how the affected agency is to proceed. On the other hand, if the original committee language is ultimately acceptable to congressional negotiators, the explanatory statement might be silent due to an expectation that the agency will follow the original directive.³³ In addition, language in the explanatory statement usually directs compliance with the directives in earlier committee reports unless they are explicitly contravened.³⁴

Report language may be incorporated by reference into the statutory text through provisions in that text (referred to in this report as "incorporation by reference"). In other words, the statutory text refers to report language that further allocates funds and the statute's reference to the report language makes clear Congress's intent to make the report allocations effective as statutory requirements.³⁵ For LHHS in recent decades, provisions incorporating report language funding allocations by reference has been typical for Congressional Directed Spending (CDS)/Community Project Funding (CPF) projects (see the "FY2026 LHHS Congressionally Directed Spending (CDS) and Community Project Funding" section) and for the Prevention and Public Health Fund (PPHF) at HHS (see the "Prevention and Public Health Fund" section), but rare for other types of programs, projects, and activities. However, the FY2026 LHHS omnibus included such language for multiple accounts and headings in the HHS, ED, and RA titles of the bill. (See an example of such language, for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the text box below, as well as other examples noted throughout the remainder of the report [e.g., the "Selected HHS Highlights by Agency" section]). When this CRS report discusses selected issues for each of the LHHS titles, it treats language that was incorporated by reference as a statutory requirement.

LHHS Funding by Bill Title (FY2024-FY2026)

Table 2 displays discretionary and mandatory funding by LHHS bill title for FY2024 enacted, FY2025 estimated, various FY2026 proposals, and FY2026 enacted. The amounts shown in the table reflect total budget authority provided in the annual LHHS bill (i.e., all funds appropriated in the bill regardless of the fiscal year in which the funds become available), not total budget authority available for the current fiscal year. (For a comparable table showing current-year budget authority, see Table A-2.) Note that the totals in this table do not include emergency-designated appropriations; those amounts are displayed separately at the bottom of the table and are in addition to regular appropriations.

Figure 2 displays discretionary and mandatory LHHS funding levels enacted in the FY2026 LHHS omnibus, by bill title. (While the percentages discussed in this section were calculated based on FY2026 enacted, they are generally also illustrative—within several percentage points—of the share of funds directed to each bill title in FY2024 and FY2025, and under the FY2026 proposals.)

As this figure demonstrates, HHS accounts for the largest share of total FY2026 LHHS appropriations: $1.555 trillion, or 89.4%. This is due to the large amount of mandatory funding included in the HHS appropriation, the majority of which is for Medicaid grants to states and payments to health care trust funds. After HHS, RA and ED represent the next-largest shares of total LHHS funding, accounting for 4.9% and 4.8%, respectively. (The majority of the ED appropriations each year are discretionary, while the bulk of funding for RA goes toward mandatory payments and administrative costs of the Supplemental Security Income program at the Social Security Administration.) DOL accounts for the smallest share of total LHHS funds, 0.9%.

The overall composition of LHHS funding is noticeably different when comparing only discretionary appropriations. HHS accounts for a comparatively smaller share of total discretionary appropriations (51.5%), while ED accounts for a relatively larger share (34.9%). Together, these two departments represent the majority (86.4%) of discretionary LHHS appropriations. RA and DOL account for the remaining discretionary funds, at 7.6% and 6.0%, respectively.

Figure 2. FY2026 Enacted LHHS Appropriations by Title (non-emergency budget authority in billions of dollars unless otherwise indicated)

Source: Amounts in this figure are generally drawn from or calculated based on data contained in the explanatory statement accompanying the FY2026 LHHS omnibus (P.L. 119-75 ) available in the Congressional Record, vol. 172, no. 15, book II, January 22, 2026, pp. H1590-H1660. Enacted totals for FY2026 do not include contingent or indefinite discretionary appropriations. For consistency with source materials, amounts in this figure generally do not reflect mandatory spending sequestration, where applicable, nor do they reflect any transfers or reprogramming of funds pursuant to executive authorities. CRS calculations do, however, include LHHS funding provided to HHS pursuant to the 21st Century Cures Act (P.L. 114-255), as amended. Notes: Details may not add to totals due to rounding. Amounts in this figure (1) reflect all BA appropriated in the bill, regardless of the year in which funds become available (i.e., totals do not include advances from prior-year appropriations, but do include advances for subsequent years provided in this bill); (2) have generally not been adjusted to reflect scorekeeping; (3) comprise only those funds provided for agencies and accounts subject to the jurisdiction of the LHHS subcommittees of the House and Senate appropriations committees; and (4) do not include appropriations that occur outside of appropriations bills.

FY2026 LHHS Congressionally Directed Spending (CDS) and Community Project Funding (CPF)

The terms "Congressionally Directed Spending" in the Senate and "Community Project Funding" in the House have been used recently to describe various types of congressional funding allocations that are often referred to as earmarks. For the FY2026 appropriations cycle, the Senate Appropriations Committee announced that it would accept CDS requests for a selection of budget accounts.³⁶ The House Appropriations Committee also made a similar announcement.³⁷

CDS and CPF requests are subject to a number of chamber-specific rules, protocols, and restrictions. Earmark definitions vary by chamber, but typically refer to funding that directly benefits a specific entity, locality, congressional district, or state without going through a formula or competitive award process. For the FY2026 cycle, the Senate Appropriations Committee guidance identified several accounts in the LHHS bill as eligible for CDS requests:³⁸

• DOL, Employment and Training Administration (ETA), Training and Employment Services
• HHS, Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Program Management
• HHS, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Health Surveillance and Program Support
• HHS, Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Children and Families Services Programs
• HHS, Administration for Community Living (ACL), Aging and Disability Services Programs
• ED, Innovation and Improvement, Fund for the Improvement of Education
• ED, Higher Education, Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education

However, the FY2026 House Appropriations Committee guidance did not identify any LHHS accounts for CPF requests.³⁹

Ultimately, the FY2026 LHHS omnibus provided funding for more than a thousand items designated as CDS requests across the seven LHHS accounts to which earmark requests were accepted by the Senate Appropriations Committee. In a handful of cases, these items also carried a CPF designation and identified a requesting Member of the House. In such cases, the initial CPF request had been made for the same entity in a bill other than LHHS. A full list of the LHHS CDS and CPF items can be found on pages H1599-H1625 of the explanatory statement accompanying the FY2026 LHHS omnibus.⁴⁰

Department of Labor (DOL)

All amounts in this section are based on regular LHHS appropriations only. The amounts do not include mandatory funds provided outside of the annual appropriations process (e.g., direct appropriations for Unemployment Insurance benefits payments). All amounts are rounded (e.g., to the nearest million), as labeled. The dollar changes and percentage changes discussed in the text are based on unrounded amounts. For consistency with source materials, amounts do not reflect sequestration or re-estimates of mandatory spending programs, where applicable.

About DOL

DOL is a federal department comprising multiple entities that provide services related to employment and training, income security, worker protection, contract enforcement, and labor force information. Annual LHHS appropriations laws direct funding to all DOL entities (see the text box).⁴²

DOL entities fall primarily into three main functional areas: workforce development (training, employment services, and income security), worker protection, and labor market data and analysis. The Employment and Training Administration (ETA) administers several workforce employment and training programs—such as the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) state formula grant programs, Job Corps, and the Employment Service—that provide direct funding for employment activities or administration of income security programs (e.g., for the Unemployment Insurance benefits program). Another DOL entity, the Veterans' Employment and Training Service (VETS), provides employment services specifically for the veteran population. Several DOL agencies enforce federal worker protections and provide various worker protection services. For example, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), and the Wage and Hour Division (WHD) provide different types of regulation and oversight of working conditions. DOL entities focused on worker protection enforce federal labor laws and provide services to ensure worker safety, adherence to wage and overtime laws, and contract compliance, among other duties. In addition, DOL's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) collects data and provides analysis on the labor market and related labor issues; BLS is the principal federal statistical agency responsible for measuring labor market outcomes and trends.

FY2026 Caveats

In general, the DOL section of this report displays funds where they were appropriated and does not include subsequent transfers, except when noted. This applies to any funds transferred between accounts, agencies, or departments to, for example, effectuate program moves. (See the discussion of this issue for DOL in the context of ED in the "Interagency Agreements" section.)

FY2026 DOL Appropriations Overview

Table 3 displays FY2026 enacted and proposed funding levels for DOL, along with FY2024 and FY2025 enacted levels. Following the conventions in this report, the totals in this table do not include emergency-designated appropriations; however, note that DOL received no emergency-designated appropriations in FY2024, FY2025, or FY2026.

Discretionary funds represent the majority of DOL appropriations, accounting for 88% of FY2026 enacted levels. The FY2026 LHHS omnibus increased discretionary appropriations for DOL by $65 million (+0.5%) compared to FY2025. Relative to the FY2025 full-year CR, discretionary DOL appropriations would have decreased by $4.0 billion (-29.6%) under the House committee bill, increased by $71 million (+0.5%) under the Senate committee bill, and decreased by $4.6 billion (-33.5%) under the FY2026 President's budget request.

Selected DOL Highlights

The following sections present highlights from the FY2026 enacted and proposed appropriations compared to the FY2025 full-year CR for selected DOL accounts and programs.⁴³

Table 4 displays funding for DOL programs and activities discussed in this section.

Employment and Training Administration (ETA)

ETA administers federal workforce development programs, including those authorized under Title I of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA; P.L. 113-128, as amended), and provides oversight to state workforce agencies in the implementation and administration of state unemployment insurance programs, federal unemployment compensation programs, and other wage-loss, worker dislocation, and adjustment assistance compensation programs. These services are primarily provided through state workforce agencies and local workforce development systems.

The FY2026 LHHS omnibus provided $10.4 billion in discretionary budget authority for the ETA. This is $121 million more (+1.2%) than FY2025 ($10.2 billion). Under the FY2026 LHHS omnibus, the largest discretionary increases at ETA were directed to CDS/CPF activities (+$96 million) which had not been funded under the FY2025 full-year CR, as well as certain program integrity activities (+$79 million) associated with the DOL Unemployment Compensation program. Most discretionary ETA programs and activities received flat funding relative to the FY2025 full-year CR, though a few experienced decreases. Specifically, programs experiencing decreases in funding in the FY2026 LHHS omnibus compared to FY2025 levels include

• WIOA Adult Activities State Grants ($876 million), $10 million (-1.1%) less than FY2025;
• the Reentry Employment Opportunities (REO) program ($110 million), $5 million (-4.3%) less than FY2025;
• the Community Service Employment for Older Americans (CSEOA) program ($395 million), $10 million (-2.5%) less than FY2025;
• the Employment Service ($693 million), $8 million (-1.1%) less than FY2025;
• One-Stop Centers ($53 million), $10 million (-15.6%) less than FY2025; and
• ETA Program Administration ($158 million), $14 million (-8.4%) less than FY2025.

While the FY2026 Senate committee bill would have increased ETA funding by $123 million (+1.2%) relative to FY2025—including level funding for most WIOA programs—the FY2026 House committee bill would have reduced discretionary ETA funding by $2.9 billion (-28.4%). The reduction would have primarily come from the proposed elimination of funding for several workforce programs, including WIOA Youth Activities ($948 million in FY2025), the Migrant and Seasonal Farmworkers program ($97 million in FY2025), the Reentry Employment Opportunities program ($115 million in FY2025),⁴⁴ and Community Service Employment for Older Americans ($405 million in FY2025). In addition, the House committee bill would have reduced funding for Job Corps to $880 million, an $880 million (-50.0%) reduction relative to FY2025.

Within the $301 million appropriation in the FY2026 LHHS omnibus for the WIOA Dislocated Workers Assistance National Reserve (DWA National Reserve), the explanatory statement accompanying the FY2026 LHHS omnibus directs ETA to fund four initiatives totaling $137 million, which would leave $164 million for other DWA National Reserve activities.⁴⁵ The DWA National Reserve provides employment services and other assistance to workers laid off due to emergencies or major disasters.

The FY2026 President's budget proposed to consolidate 11 workforce development programs into a single $2.9 billion grant program—Make America Skilled Again (MASA). According to the DOL FY2026 Budget in Brief,

This simplified structure will allow program administrators to spend less time and money complying with Federal requirements and instead focus on driving toward more effective approaches and improved outcomes for workers. To help realize President Trump's commitment to reach one million active apprentices, the Budget requires that MASA grantees spend at least 10 percent of their funds on Registered Apprenticeship activities, guaranteeing funding for this highly effective training model.⁴⁶

Funding for this consolidated program was not included in the FY2026 House committee bill, the FY2026 Senate committee bill, nor the FY2026 LHHS omnibus.

Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)

BLS is the principal federal statistical agency responsible for measuring labor market trends, working conditions, price changes, and productivity, through data products such as the Current Population Survey and the Consumer Price Index. The FY2026 LHHS omnibus provided $709 million for BLS, which is an increase of $5 million (+0.6%) compared to FY2025. The FY2026 Senate committee bill would have provided $704 million (the same amount as FY2025) and the FY2026 House committee bill would have provided $714 million, an increase of $10 million (+1.4%) compared to FY2025. The FY2026 President's budget proposed transferring most BLS funding and activities from DOL to the Department of Commerce. Under the budget proposal, a total of $68 million (the same as FY2025) would have remained at DOL for carrying out certain BLS Labor Market Information activities. All other funds for existing BLS activities (a total of $580 million under the President's proposal) would have been directed to the Department of Commerce. According to the BLS FY2026 Congressional Justification, to achieve cost savings beyond those in the reorganization proposal, BLS would "prioritize the most mission critical activities necessary for the production of the core data series ... required by statute, or in use in current law."⁴⁷ Neither the FY2026 LHHS omnibus, FY2026 Senate committee bill, nor FY2026 House committee bill reflected this reorganization proposal.

The congressional explanatory materials accompanying the FY2026 LHHS omnibus, the FY2026 House committee report, and the FY2026 Senate committee report addressed the work of BLS in various ways. For example,

• the explanatory statement accompanying the FY2026 LHHS omnibus "encourag[ed] BLS to evaluate the impact of artificial intelligence on the economy, including job loss, creation, and displacement;"⁴⁸
• the FY2026 House Appropriations committee report highlighted issues related to declining labor survey response rates, regional inflation data, measurement of labor market outcomes for military spouses, the Standard Occupational Classification of pharmacists, and cost estimates for a survey on employer-provided training;⁴⁹ and
• the FY2026 Senate Appropriations Committee report also highlighted declining labor survey response rates, and directed the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to report on the impact of the elimination of certain advisory committees on data quality and reliability, and directed BLS to maintain funding for the current National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) cohorts and to continue development of the new NLSY27 cohort.⁵⁰

Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB)

ILAB provides research, advocacy, technical assistance, and grants to promote workers' rights in different parts of the world. The FY2026 LHHS omnibus provided $116 million for ILAB, which is the same as the FY2025 LHHS full-year CR level. The FY2026 Senate committee bill would have provided $111 million for ILAB, a decrease of $5 million (-4.3%), while the FY2026 House committee bill would have eliminated funding for ILAB and the FY2026 President's budget would have decreased ILAB funding by $46 million (-39.5%). The DOL Budget in Brief explained these proposed reductions as follows: "Consistent with putting American Workers First, the Budget streamlines the ILAB, reorienting it to focus on its core work of enforcing the labor provisions of trade agreements, ensuring that American workers and businesses benefit from international trade."⁵¹

Labor-Related General Provisions

Annual LHHS appropriations acts regularly contain general provisions related to certain labor issues. This section highlights selected DOL general provisions in the FY2026 LHHS omnibus.

The FY2026 LHHS omnibus continued several provisions that have been included in previous LHHS appropriations acts, including those that

• exempted certain insurance claims adjusters from overtime protection for two years following a "major disaster" (included since FY2016);⁵²
• directed the Secretary of Labor to accept private wage surveys as part of the process of determining prevailing wages in the H-2B program, even in instances in which relevant wage data are available from BLS (included since FY2016);⁵³
• authorized the Secretary of Labor to provide up to $450,000 in "excess personal property" to apprenticeship programs to assist training apprentices (included since FY2018);⁵⁴
• authorized the Secretary of Labor to employ law enforcement officers or special agents to provide protection to the Secretary of Labor and certain other employees and family members at public events and in situations in which there is a "unique and articulable" threat of physical harm (included since FY2018);⁵⁵
• authorized the Secretary of Labor to dispose of or divest "by any means the Secretary determines appropriate" all or part of the real property on which the Treasure Island Job Corps Center and the Gary Job Corps Center are located (included since FY2018);⁵⁶ and
• prohibited annual appropriations from being used to alter the Interagency Agreement between DOL and the U.S. Department of Agriculture or to close any Civilian Conservation Centers unless certain conditions are met (included since FY2020).⁵⁷

Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)

All amounts in this section are based on regular LHHS appropriations only; they do not include funds for HHS agencies provided through other appropriations bills (e.g., funding for the Food and Drug Administration) or outside of the annual appropriations process (e.g., direct appropriations for Medicare or mandatory funds provided by authorizing laws). All amounts in this section are rounded (e.g., to the nearest million), as labeled. The dollar changes and percentage changes discussed in the text are based on unrounded amounts. For consistency with source materials, amounts do not reflect sequestration or re-estimates of mandatory spending programs, where applicable.

About HHS

HHS is a large federal department composed of multiple agencies working to enhance the health and well-being of Americans. Annual LHHS appropriations laws direct funding to most (but not all) HHS agencies (see text box for HHS agencies supported by the LHHS bill).⁵⁸

The LHHS bill directs funding to multiple Public Health Service (PHS) agencies, including the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health⁵⁹ (ARPA-H), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR). These public health agencies support diverse missions, ranging from the provision of health care services and supports (e.g., HRSA, SAMHSA), to the advancement of health care quality and medical research (e.g., AHRQ, NIH, ARPA-H), to protection and promotion of public health (e.g., CDC) and public health emergency preparedness and response (ASPR).

In addition to funding the above PHS agencies, the LHHS bill provides funding for annually appropriated components of the CMS,⁶⁰ which is the HHS agency responsible for the administration of Medicare, Medicaid, the State Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and consumer protections and private health insurance provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA; P.L. 111-148, as amended).

The LHHS bill also provides funding for two HHS agencies focused primarily on the provision of social services: the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and the Administration for Community Living (ACL). ACF's mission is to promote the economic and social well-being of vulnerable children, youth, families, and communities. ACL was formed with a goal of increasing access to community supports for older Americans and people with disabilities.

In addition, the LHHS bill provides funding for the HHS Office of the Secretary (OS), which encompasses a broad array of management, research, and oversight functions in support of the entire department.

Proposed FY2026 HHS Reorganization

The FY2026 HHS budget request proposed a wide-spread reorganization of the department that would have consolidated several HHS agencies. For example, the budget would have

• consolidated into a new Administration for a Healthy America (AHA) two existing operating divisions—the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)—as well as the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS; of NIH) and some programs from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and some programs of the OS;
• eliminated the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) and transferred most of its functions to the CDC and the OS;
• eliminated the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and moved most of its functions to a proposed new staff division (the Office of Strategy) under the OS; and
• consolidated into a new Administration for Children, Families, and Communities (ACFC) two existing operating divisions—the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and Administration on Community Living (ACL).

These reorganization proposals were largely not adopted in the House committee bill, Senate committee bill, or in the enacted FY2026 LHHS omnibus. The President's budget request, as displayed in this report, is generally drawn from or estimated based on the House Appropriations Committee's representation of the budget proposal. In large part, the House committee's analysis of the President's request does not reflect the proposed reorganization, instead displaying most of the President's HHS funding requests according to the department's existing organizational structure.⁶¹ These adjustments for comparability allow for easier comparison at the program, project, and activity level.

In addition to the proposed reorganizations, the President's budget also proposed eliminating funding for a number of HHS programs and activities. Under this proposal, the largest share of the HHS discretionary request for entities funded by LHHS would have been distributed to the PHS agencies: $49.1 billion, or about 58% of HHS discretionary funding as a whole. When compared to the existing HHS structure, this would be a lower proportion of funds for the PHS agencies than has recently been provided (about 64% in FY2025), or was ultimately provided in the FY2026 LHHS omnibus (65%). The largest of the PHS agencies, NIH, was proposed to receive about 35% of HHS discretionary funding in the President's budget, which was also a lower proportion of funds than had recently been provided (about 40% in FY2025 and 41% in FY2026 enacted). ACF and ACL combined would have received roughly 35% of discretionary HHS funds under the proposed reorganization, which is a higher proportion than had recently been provided (31% in both FY2025 and FY2026).

Ultimately, the FY2026 House committee bill, FY2026 Senate committee bill, and FY2026 LHHS omnibus, appropriated funding to HHS under its existing structure and generally not to these proposed new entities. In addition, new language was enacted in the FY2026 LHHS omnibus that addressed multiple aspects of funds distribution and expenditure at HHS. For example, NIH language addressed issues related to the distribution of grant funds, including a new provision on multiyear award funding (§224), and the retention of a longstanding provision related to caps on indirect costs under grants (§240). And a new provision was enacted pertaining to the proposed CDC reorganization that required the HHS Secretary to submit to the House and Senate Appropriations Committee and make publicly available a detailed plan and justification of any reorganization moving CDC functions prior to carrying it out. This language also directed that HHS "shall support staffing levels necessary to fulfill its statutory responsibilities including carrying out programs, projects, and activities funded in this title of this Act in a timely manner" (§239).

FY2026 Caveats

In general, the HHS section of this report displays funds where they were appropriated and does not include subsequent transfers, except when noted. This applies to any funds transferred between accounts, agencies, or departments to, for example, effectuate program moves. (See the discussion of this issue for HHS in the context of ED in the "Interagency Agreements" section).

Consistent with the rest of the report, the HHS section generally does not include emergency appropriations in the totals that follow. (These emergency funds are listed at the bottom of Table 5 and are not included in the table totals.) However, in limited cases (specifically two accounts at ACF), some emergency designated appropriations are included in FY2024 and FY2025 totals, where noted, because the funds were effectively provided for regular program operations, rather than being targeted to needs arising from a particular disaster or other event (e.g., hurricane). No emergency-designated appropriations had been proposed or enacted for FY2026 as of the date of this report. Consistent with the rest of the report, all emergency-designated funding also is included at the bottom of these HHS tables.

FY2026 HHS Appropriations Overview

Table 5 displays FY2026 proposed and enacted funding levels for HHS, along with FY2024 and FY2025 levels. The totals in this table do not include emergency-designated appropriations. Those amounts (if applicable) are displayed separately, along with the law in which they were enacted, at the bottom of the table and are in addition to regular appropriations.

In general, discretionary funds account for 7.5% of HHS appropriations in the LHHS bill. The FY2026 LHHS omnibus increased appropriations for HHS by 0.2% relative to FY2025. The FY2026 House committee bill would have decreased LHHS appropriations by 5.7%, whereas the President's request would have decreased funding by 27.6%. The Senate committee bill would have increased funding by 0.4%.

Figure 3 provides an HHS agency-level breakdown of the FY2026 enacted non-emergency HHS appropriations. As this figure demonstrates, annual HHS appropriations are dominated by mandatory funding, the majority of which goes to CMS to provide Medicaid benefits and payments to health care trust funds. When taking into account both mandatory and discretionary funding, CMS accounts for 91.5% of enacted FY2026 appropriations for HHS. ACF and NIH account for the next-largest shares of total HHS appropriations, receiving 3.3% and 3.0% apiece, respectively.

By contrast, when looking exclusively at discretionary appropriations, funding for CMS constitutes about 4.0% of enacted FY2026 HHS appropriations. The bulk of discretionary appropriations goes to the PHS agencies, which combined account for 64.7% of discretionary appropriations provided for HHS. NIH typically receives the largest share of all discretionary funding among HHS agencies (40.6% in FY2026 enacted), with ACF accounting for the second-largest share (28.4% in FY2026 enacted).

Figure 3. FY2026 Enacted HHS Appropriations by Agency (budget authority in billions of dollars)

Source: Amounts in this figure are generally drawn from or calculated based on data contained in the explanatory statement accompanying the FY2026 LHHS omnibus (P.L. 119-75 ) available in the Congressional Record, vol. 172, no. 15, book II, January 22, 2026, pp. H1590-H1660. Enacted totals for FY2026 do not include contingent or indefinite discretionary appropriations. For consistency with source materials, amounts in this figure generally do not reflect mandatory spending sequestration, where applicable, nor do they reflect any transfers or reprogramming of funds pursuant to executive authorities. CRS calculations do, however, include LHHS funding provided to HHS pursuant to the 21st Century Cures Act (P.L. 114-255), as amended. Notes: Details may not add to totals due to rounding. The bar representing the combined mandatory and discretionary total for CMS has been abbreviated due to space constraints. When taking into account both mandatory and discretionary funding, CMS receives over 20 times the funding appropriated to either ACF or NIH in the FY2026 LHHS omnibus. Amounts in this table (1) reflect all BA appropriated in the bill, regardless of the year in which funds become available (i.e., totals do not include advances from prior-year appropriations, but do include advances for subsequent years provided in this bill); (2) have generally not been adjusted to reflect scorekeeping; (3) comprise only those funds provided (or requested) for agencies and accounts subject to the jurisdiction of the LHHS subcommittees of the House and Senate appropriations committees; and (4) do not include appropriations that occur outside of appropriations bills.

Special Public Health Funding Mechanisms

Annual appropriations for HHS Public Health Service agencies are perhaps best understood in the context of certain HHS-specific funding mechanisms, including the Public Health Service Evaluation Set-Aside, the PPHF, and 21^st Century Cures Act authorities. In recent years, LHHS appropriations have used these funding mechanisms to direct additional support to certain programs and activities.

Public Health Service Evaluation Tap

The PHS Evaluation Set-Aside, also known as the PHS Evaluation Tap, is a unique feature of HHS appropriations. It is authorized by Section 241 of the Public Health Service Act (PHSA), and allows the Secretary of HHS to redistribute a portion of eligible PHS agency appropriations across HHS for program evaluation purposes. The PHSA limits the set-aside to not less than 0.2% and not more than 1.0% of eligible program appropriations.

LHHS appropriations acts commonly establish additional requirements and authorities for these funds beyond those in Section 241 of the PHSA. These include a higher maximum percentage for the set-aside and directing transfers of specific amounts of tap funding to selected HHS programs. Since FY2010, and including in FY2026, this higher maximum set-aside level has been 2.5% of eligible appropriations (§204).⁶² The House committee bill, Senate committee bill, and the President's budget, all proposed to continue this 2.5% level. With regard to the directed transfers, the LHHS acts do not specify which account is the source of the transfer. As a result, tables show amounts transferred in, without showing amounts transferred out (see text box above).

Each fiscal year, after the LHHS appropriations act allocates this tap transfer authority to specified programs, any transfer authority that remains unallocated is available to be used by the HHS Secretary pursuant to the parameters established in law. (Such post-enactment PHS Evaluation Tap transfers are generally not within this scope of this report.) In addition, a longstanding LHHS provision (see §203 in the FY2026 LHHS omnibus) prohibits funds from being expended that have been transferred pursuant to Section 241 or "for any other taps and assessments made by any office located in HHS" until the HHS Secretary submits to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees a report detailing the planned uses of the tapped funds. This requirement does not apply to funds that the LHHS act specifically allocates for tap transfers (e.g., those for NIH discussed below). Prior to the FY2026 LHHS omnibus, this provision applied only to taps and assessments of funds appropriated in the LHHS act, but the FY2026 LHHS omnibus included language expanding its scope to HHS funds in any other FY2026 appropriations act (e.g., HHS funds appropriated under the Agriculture appropriations act and the Interior-Environment appropriations act). This FY2026 expansion of the provision was proposed by the House committee bill. The Senate committee bill would have continued the language that was in effect prior to FY2026, whereas the President's budget proposed to eliminate the entire provision.

Before FY2015, LHHS appropriations acts traditionally used the PHS Evaluation Tap to provide more than a dozen HHS programs with funding beyond their annual appropriations; in some cases, this was the sole source of funding for a program or activity. However, between FY2015 and FY2023, LHHS appropriations acts directed tap funds to a smaller number of programs or activities within three HHS agencies (NIH, SAMHSA, and OS). This change was particularly notable for AHRQ, which was funded primarily through tap transfers from FY2003 to FY2014, but has received discretionary appropriations since then.⁶³ Also between FY2015 and FY2023, LHHS appropriations laws directed the largest share of tap transfers to NIH.

Since FY2024 and including in FY2026, PHS tap transfers were also directed to the Public Health Scientific Services (PHSS) within the CDC. The FY2026 LHHS omnibus directed $43 million in such transfers, the same as FY2025 and as proposed in the FY2026 Senate committee bill. The President's budget had proposed that the CDC be transferred tap funds in the amount of $380 million (to support both PHSS and CDC Cross-Cutting Activities and Program Support), whereas the House committee bill proposed no such transfers for the CDC.

For OS, the FY2026 LHHS omnibus directed $101 million in tap transfers, a decrease (-$33 million, -24.9%) relative to FY2025. The Senate committee bill had proposed the same amount of funding as FY2025 ($134 million), whereas the House floor bill proposed a $17 million decrease (-12.5%), and the President's budget proposed an $81 million decrease (-60.4%). Within the tap transfers for OS, $36 million of these were directed to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. This office was solely funded by tap transfers between FY2022 and FY2025, but now is funded by a combination of transfers and discretionary appropriations totaling $69 million (the same total amount of funding as FY2025).

For NIH, the FY2026 LHHS omnibus directed $1.427 billion in tap transfers, $15 million (+1.1%) more than FY2025 enacted. The Senate committee bill proposed the same amount of tap transfers to NIH as FY2025, whereas the House committee bill proposed a $47 million (-3.4%) reduction, and the President's Budget proposed a $1.162 billion (-82.3%) reduction.

Finally, for SAMHSA, the FY2026 LHHS omnibus directed the same amount of PHS Evaluation Tap transfers ($134 million) as in FY2025, the same total as the Senate committee bill. The House committee bill proposed to reduce these transfers by $2 million (-1.5%), and the President's budget proposed to reduce them by $3 million (-2.2%).

Prevention and Public Health Fund (PPHF)

The PPHF contains a permanent, annual appropriation that is intended to provide support each year to prevention, wellness, and related public health programs funded through HHS accounts. PPHF funds are intended to supplement the funding that selected programs receive through regular appropriations. The PPHF authority instructs the HHS Secretary to transfer amounts from the fund to HHS agencies. However, since FY2014, provisions in annual appropriations acts and accompanying reports have explicitly directed the distribution of PPHF funds and prohibited the Secretary from making further transfers for those years.⁶⁴

Initially, the law that established the PPHF (ACA, §4002) appropriated $2 billion in mandatory funds to the PPHF each fiscal year. This amount was reduced by subsequent laws that decreased PPHF funding for specified fiscal years.⁶⁵ Under current law, the FY2026 appropriation is $1.525 billion.⁶⁶ This appropriation is subject to a 5.7% reduction due to sequestration of nonexempt mandatory spending.⁶⁷ (For more information on sequestration, see the budget enforcement discussion in the Appendix.) After sequestration, the total PPHF appropriation available for FY2024 is $1.438 billion, a $212 million increase relative to FY2025. The FY2026 LHHS omnibus (and earlier congressional proposals) distributed the entirety of this additional funding to the CDC. In total, the CDC received $1.398 billion, which is 17.9% more than FY2025. The FY2026 LHHS omnibus (and earlier congressional proposals) also allocated $12 million to SAMHSA and $28 million to ACL (the same as FY2025). The FY2026 President's budget proposed to entirely eliminate the PPHF.

21^st Century Cures Act, NIH Innovation Account

The 21^st Century Cures Act (P.L. 114-255; hereinafter, the "Cures Act") established the NIH Innovation Account. The Cures Act transferred funds to the NIH Innovation Account and authorized specific amounts to be appropriated for each of FY2017 through FY2026. For FY2026, the amount authorized and subsequently appropriated in the FY2026 LHHS omnibus was $226 million, which was $181 million (-44.5%) less than the amount authorized for FY2024 ($407 million), and $99 million (+78.0) more than the amount authorized for FY2025 ($127 million). This amount was distributed as $195 million for the BRAIN Initiative and $31 million for the Precision Medicine Initiative. As with the PHS tap and PPHF, these directed transfers are noted (where applicable) in the discussion and tables that follow.

The Cures Act also specified that amounts appropriated to the NIH Innovation Account (up to the authorized funding level for the year) are effectively to be excluded from certain budgetary estimates. For consistency with source documents, the NIH, HHS, and bill-wide totals in this report generally include funds provided to this account. An exception is that these funds are excluded from totals in Table A-1, as this table only includes LHHS funds subject to discretionary spending limits.

Selected HHS Highlights by Agency

The following sections present highlights from the FY2026 enacted appropriations compared to FY2024 enacted, FY2025 enacted, and FY2026 proposals, for selected HHS agencies.⁶⁹ These summaries are followed by a brief overview of significant provisions from annual HHS appropriations laws that restrict spending in certain controversial areas, such as abortion and stem cell research. The section concludes with two tables (Table 6 and Table 7) presenting more detailed information on these funding levels for HHS.

Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)

HRSA is a federal agency focused on delivering health care services to those who are geographically isolated and economically or medically vulnerable.⁷⁰ Major HRSA programs include Community Health Centers, which supply primary and preventative care to millions of patients regardless of their ability to pay, and multiple programs under other focus areas including Health Workforce (e.g., Children's Hospitals Graduate Medical Education), Maternal and Child Health (e.g., Healthy Start), Ryan White HIV/AIDS, and Rural Health.⁷¹

The FY2026 LHHS omnibus provided $8.9 billion in discretionary budget authority for HRSA. This was $929 million (+11.6%) more than the discretionary funding level under the FY2025 full-year CR, and $2.8 billion (+46.7%) more than the FY2026 President's budget request.

The FY2026 President's budget, House committee bill, and Senate committee bill proposed divergent approaches to funding several major HRSA programs. Ultimately, for all of these programs, the prior year funding levels were sustained or increased in the FY2026 LHHS omnibus:

• The Healthy Start program is aimed at improving pregnancy-related health outcomes. The FY2026 LHHS omnibus funding level for Healthy Start was the same as FY2024, FY2025, and what was proposed by the Senate committee bill ($145 million). The FY2026 President's Budget request and the House committee bill had proposed to eliminate funding for this program.⁷²
• The Title X Family Planning grants support access to family planning and preventive health services at health care clinics. The same level of funding that was enacted for FY2024 and FY2025 was provided in the FY2026 LHHS omnibus and proposed by the Senate committee bill ($286 million). The FY2026 President's Budget request and the House committee bill proposed to eliminate funding for this program.⁷³
• The Children's Hospitals Graduate Medical Education program helps freestanding, children's hospitals pay for graduate medical education programs that train resident physicians and dentists. The FY2026 LHHS omnibus provided $395 million for this program, a 1.3% increase relative to FY2024 and FY2025 and the same amount that was proposed by the FY2026 House committee bill. The Senate committee bill proposed funding the program at prior year levels ($390 million), while the FY2026 President's Budget request proposed to eliminate funding for the program.
• The Ryan White HIV/AIDS programs provide primary medical care, medications, and support services, for low-income people with HIV.⁷⁴ FY2026 LHHS omnibus maintained the same $2.6 billion overall funding level and programmatic funding as FY2024 and FY2025, which was what the FY2026 Senate committee bill proposed. The FY2026 President's Budget proposed to eliminate Part F programs under Ryan White, which would have reduced the overall Ryan White funding level by $74 million (-2.9%) relative to the prior year levels. The House proposed to further eliminate Parts C and D as well as Ending the HIV/AIDS Epidemic (EHE) funding. This would have reduced the overall funding level by $525 million (-20.4%).⁷⁵
• The Rural Health programs at HRSA build health care capacity in rural areas. The FY2026 LHHS omnibus included new funding for Rural Hospital Provider Assistance ($25 million).⁷⁶ This funding originated in the FY2026 House committee bill, which proposed $100 million for this activity. The accompanying committee report explained that this new funding was for HRSA "to administer a formula grant program to support hospitals at the low end of the wage index serving residents in States with the highest poverty rates. By focusing limited resources on areas with the greatest demonstrated need, the Committee seeks to ensure sustained access to quality health care providers for these communities."⁷⁷ No funding for this activity was included in the FY2026 President's Budget or the Senate committee bill.

The FY2026 LHHS omnibus also included dozens of new statutory line items for certain HRSA activities under the Health Workforce, Maternal and Child Health, Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, and Rural Health Headings. In general, these types of line items had previously been specified in the explanatory statement only, but were incorporated into the law itself by reference for FY2026.⁷⁸

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

The NIH is the largest federal funder of health and medical research. NIH consists of 27 separate institutes and centers, 24 of which fund research programs in coordination with the Office of the Director. NIH also houses the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), a separate HHS operating division focused on bolstering health innovation. Over 80% of NIH's budget funds grants and other awards to support research conducted by nonfederal institutions, such as universities, medical centers, and small businesses.

The FY2026 LHHS omnibus provided NIH (including ARPA-H) with $47.3 billion in discretionary budget authority and $1.4 billion in PHS evaluation tap transfers, for a combined total funding level of $48.7 billion.⁷⁹ This total funding level is an increase of $415 million (+0.9%) compared to the FY2025 full-year CR funding levels. It is also $19.4 billion more than (+66.3%) the FY2026 President's budget proposal ($29.3 billion).

With regard to specific NIH components, the largest FY2026 enacted increase relative to FY2024 and FY2025 (when accounting for directed transfers) was for the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS; +7.7%, +$201 million); the largest FY2026 enacted decrease was for the NIH Office of the Director (OD; -5.0%, -$130 million). These changes in large part reflect a shift in funding for the Accelerating Access to Critical Therapies for ALS Act (P.L. 117-79) implementation from the OD to NINDS.⁸⁰ The FY2026 LHHS omnibus included new statutory text specifying the funding levels for certain programs. For example, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases appropriation included a new set-aside of $270 million for research to develop universal flu vaccines and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development appropriation included a set-aside of $63 million for the Implementing a Maternal health and Pregnancy Outcomes Vision for Everyone (IMPROVE) Initiative. Prior to FY2026, these amounts were directed in the explanatory statement accompanying NIH appropriations, but not in the appropriations law text itself.⁸¹

Grants Policy Changes

The FY2026 President's budget request also proposed several changes to NIH's grants policies, which were not fully adopted in the FY2026 LHHS omnibus. One proposal was a 15% cap on the amount of NIH grant funds that can pay for indirect costs (also called facilities and administrative (F&A) costs), which are expenses that are not specific to a research project and that maintain the infrastructure and administrative support for federally funded research.⁸² The FY2026 request also proposed to eliminate a recurring appropriations provision that prohibits HHS from modifying NIH indirect cost rate policies. Neither of these proposals was enacted in the FY2026 LHHS omnibus.⁸³

Another FY2026 President's budget proposal would have continued an FY2025 Administration policy to reserve half of NIH's budget for multiyear grant awards.⁸⁴ Prior to FY2025, NIH typically committed research grants to researchers for several-year "project periods," but actually awarded funds for those grants on a year-by-year basis as noncompetitive continuations of the grants. In FY2025, NIH shifted to funding more awards under a multiyear approach that fully funded those grants up front for all years of the project period. Compared to FY2024, NIH awarded fewer individual research grants in FY2025 (despite a similar overall funding level to FY2024), and the success rates for research applicants also decreased—trends that may be explained in large part by the multiyear funding policy.⁸⁵ The FY2026 LHHS omnibus included a new provision (§240) that limits the total amount of FY2026 NIH funds that can be obligated for multiyear awards to not more than the same amount of funds as in FY2025. The accompanying explanatory statement noted "strong concern about the impact of this [multiyear funding] policy on application success rates and the consequent reduction in the number of grants NIH can fund."⁸⁶

Administration for Children and Families (ACF)

The ACF mission is focused on promoting the "economic and social well-being of families, children, individuals, and communities."⁸⁷ ACF administers a wide array of human services programs, including programs dedicated to early childhood care and education, home energy assistance, and child welfare.

The FY2026 LHHS omnibus provided $33.0 billion in non-emergency discretionary budget authority to ACF. This is $934 million (-2.8%) less than the estimated $34.0 billion provided under the FY2025 full-year CR. In FY2025, ACF also received some emergency funds to support regular program operations in a supplemental appropriations act (P.L. 118-158, Division B).⁸⁸ When accounting for such funds, the FY2026 enacted level of $33.0 billion is roughly $1.2 billion (-3.5%) less than the $34.2 billion in combined FY2025 ACF appropriations provided for regular program operations, and $6.3 (+23.4%) more than the FY2026 President's request.

The FY2026 LHHS omnibus distributed nearly two-thirds of all discretionary ACF appropriations (totaling $21.5 billion) across three early childhood care and education programs: $12.4 billion for Head Start, $8.8 billion for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), and $315 million for Preschool Development Grants.

• The Head Start program provides comprehensive early childhood education and development services for low-income children. The FY2026 enacted level of $12.4 billion for Head Start was $85 million (+0.7%) more than the $12.3 billion the program received in FY2024 and FY2025. The FY2026 LHHS omnibus directed the majority of the increase ($75 million) to cost-of-living adjustments for Head Start grant recipients. The omnibus also reserved up to $8 million to establish Head Start programs in the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of the Marshall Islands.⁸⁹
• The CCDBG provides child care assistance to low-income working families. The FY2026 omnibus provided $8.8 billion for the CCDBG, which is $85 million (+1%) more than the $8.7 billion in non-emergency funds provided to the program in FY2024 and FY2025. In FY2025, the CCDBG received an additional $250 million in emergency funds for regular CCDBG program operations.⁹⁰ When accounting for these funds, the FY2026 enacted level was about $165 million (-1.8%) less than the $9.0 billion in combined FY2025 discretionary CCDBG appropriations provided for regular program operations. The FY2026 omnibus included changes to tribal set-asides within the CCDBG, effectively directing that not less than 5.0% be reserved for such purposes. In addition, the omnibus added a new proviso stipulating that HHS must award to each state its "allotted amount no less than quarterly."
• The Preschool Development Grants program provides competitive grants to support state efforts to improve coordination and enhance quality across early childhood care and education programs. The FY2026 LHHS omnibus provided $315 million for the PDG, the same amount as was provided in FY2024 and FY2025. The FY2026 President's budget and the FY2026 House committee bill proposed eliminating PDG funding. The President's request explained this proposal was tied to the Administration's "priority to return education to the States."⁹¹

In addition to the PDG, the President's budget proposed to eliminate funding for a number of other ACF programs and activities, such as the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), the Community Services Block Grant (CSBG), and certain programs targeted to refugee populations (e.g., Transitional and Medical Assistance and Refugee Support Services within the Refugee and Entrant Services account). The FY2026 LHHS omnibus did not adopt these elimination proposals and instead maintained or increased funding for these programs.

The FY2026 LHHS omnibus also included new statutory line-items for certain ACF activities that had previously had funding amounts provided in the explanatory statement only. Specifically, amounts for several activities under Social Services Research and Demonstration were incorporated into the law itself by reference (e.g., $20 million for the Diaper Distribution Demonstration and Research Pilot).⁹²

Restrictions Related to Certain Controversial Issues

Annual LHHS appropriations measures regularly contain broad restrictions related to certain controversial issues. For instance, annual LHHS appropriations acts commonly include provisions limiting the use of federal funds for abortions, the use of human embryos for research, needle exchange programs, and gun control advocacy.

Abortions: Since FY1977, annual LHHS appropriations acts have included provisions limiting the circumstances under which LHHS funds (including Medicaid funds) may be used to pay for abortions. Early versions of these provisions applied only to HHS, but since FY1994 most provisions have applied to the entire LHHS bill. Under current provisions, (1) abortions may be funded only when the life of the mother is endangered or in cases of rape or incest; (2) funds may not be used to buy a managed care package that includes abortion coverage, except in cases of rape, incest, or life endangerment; and (3) federal programs and state and local governments that receive LHHS funding are prohibited from discriminating against health care entities that do not provide or pay for abortions or abortion services. The FY2026 LHHS omnibus retained these existing restrictions (§§506 and 507), consistent with what was proposed by the Senate committee bill, the House committee bill, and the President's budget.⁹³ The FY2026 House committee bill would have additionally amended the Public Health Service Act to establish a right for designated parties to bring civil action for certain violations of §507(d)⁹⁴ in the FY2024 LHHS omnibus "or any subsequent substantially similar provision" (§252 of the House committee bill). The House committee bill also proposed three new abortion-related funding restrictions in the HHS title of the bill: prohibiting funds to hospitals and other entities that provide abortion-related training if the training programs do not satisfy specified requirements (§237); prohibiting funds to specified entities that perform or provide funds to another entity that performs abortions other than those involving cases of rape, incest, or life endangerment (§238); and prohibiting funds to support or administer certain abortion-related grants, contracts, or cooperative agreements (§239). None of these proposed House committee bill provisions were included in the enacted bill.

Human Embryo Research: Since FY1996, annual LHHS appropriations have included a provision prohibiting any LHHS funds (including NIH funds) from being used to create human embryos for research purposes or for research in which human embryos are destroyed. The FY2026 LHHS omnibus (and all of the earlier proposals) retained these existing restrictions (§508).⁹⁵ The House committee bill would also have prohibited the use of funds for human fetal tissue research if such tissue was obtained through an induced abortion (§236 of the House committee bill); this provision was not included in the final bill.

Needle Exchange Programs: Since FY1990, annual LHHS appropriations have generally included a provision prohibiting any LHHS funds from being used for needle exchange programs (i.e., programs in which sterile needles or syringes are made available to injection drug users in exchange for used needles or syringes to mitigate the spread of related infections, such as hepatitis and HIV/AIDS).⁹⁶ Starting in FY2016, the provision was modified to allow funds to be used for needle exchange programs under the following conditions: (1) federal funds may not be used to purchase the needles, but may be used for other aspects of such programs; (2) the state or local jurisdiction must demonstrate, in consultation with CDC, that they are experiencing, or at risk for, a significant increase in hepatitis infections or an HIV outbreak due to injection drug use; and (3) the program must be operating in accordance with state and local law. The FY2026 LHHS omnibus (and all of the earlier proposals) retained these restrictions (§525).

Gun Control: Since FY1997, annual LHHS appropriations have included provisions prohibiting the use of certain funds for activities that advocate or promote gun control. Early versions of these provisions applied only to CDC; since FY2012, annual appropriations acts also have included HHS-specific restrictions, in addition to restrictions that apply to all LHHS funds (including funds transferred from the PPHF). The FY2026 LHHS omnibus (and all of the earlier proposals) retained these restrictions (§210 [HHS] and §503(c) [all LHHS, plus PPHF transfers]).⁹⁷ The House committee bill additionally proposed a provision that would have prohibited the use of funds by the CDC, NIH, and SAMHSA to fund or carry out any research relating to gunshot injury or mortality prevention that meets specified criteria (§255). That provision was not included in the FY2026 LHHS omnibus.

Department of Education (ED)

Amounts in this section are based on regular LHHS appropriations only. They do not include mandatory funds provided outside of the annual appropriations process (e.g., direct appropriations for the Federal Direct Student Loan program and the mandatory portion of the Federal Pell Grant program). Amounts are rounded (e.g., to the nearest million), as labeled. The dollar and percentage changes discussed are based on unrounded amounts. For consistency with source materials, amounts do not reflect sequestration or re-estimates of mandatory spending programs, where applicable.

About ED

Federal policymakers established ED in 1980.⁹⁸ Its mission is to "promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access for students of all ages."⁹⁹ Typically, about three-quarters of ED's discretionary appropriations go either to local educational agencies—which primarily use the funds to provide educational and related services for educationally disadvantaged students and students with disabilities—or to low-income postsecondary students in the form of Pell Grants, which help pay for college. The remainder of ED's discretionary budget provides for a wide range of activities, including (but not limited to) support for minority-serving institutions; educational research; and career, technical, and adult education.

The federal government provides roughly 12% of overall funding for public elementary and secondary education in the United States.¹⁰⁰ The majority of school funding—about 88%—comes from states and local districts, which have primary responsibility for the provision of elementary and secondary education. With regard to higher education, the federal government provided roughly 54% of undergraduate and graduate student aid in academic year (AY) 2024-2025.¹⁰¹ (A large share of this aid is provided in the form of student loans that must be repaid.)

FY2026 Caveats

In general, the ED section of this report displays funds where they were appropriated and does not include subsequent transfers, except when noted. This applies to any funds transferred between accounts, agencies, or departments to, for example, effectuate program moves. In particular, large amounts of funding for programs and entities funded by the ED title of the bill were transferred during FY2025 and FY2026 via a series of interagency agreements (IAAs). (Background on these is provided in the "Interagency Agreements" section.)

While source materials were inconsistent in their treatment of proposed or enacted rescissions of ED funding, for amounts presented in this report, proposed rescissions of advance appropriations set to become available in FY2026 were included in applicable account and agency totals. Proposed or enacted rescissions of prior-year funding were generally treated as scorekeeping adjustments.¹⁰²

FY2026 ED Appropriations Overview

Table 8 displays FY2026 proposed and enacted funding levels for ED, along with FY2024 and FY2025 levels. Following the conventions in this report, the totals in this table do not include emergency-designated appropriations; however, note that ED received no emergency-designated appropriations in FY2024, FY2025, or FY2026.

Discretionary funds represent the majority of ED's annual appropriations, accounting for roughly 95% of ED funding. The FY2026 enacted discretionary ED appropriations were 0.3% higher than FY2025 levels. Proposed discretionary ED appropriations for FY2026 compared to FY2025 would have decreased by 15.3% under the President's budget, decreased by 15.1% under the House committee bill, and increased by 0.3% under the Senate committee bill.

Selected ED Highlights

The following sections present highlights from FY2026 enacted and proposed appropriations compared to FY2024 and FY2025 levels for selected ED accounts and programs.¹⁰³ Table 9 tracks funding levels for major ED budget and appropriations accounts, and selected items within those accounts.

In addition to the highlighted accounts and programs, the decreases in ED funding proposed by the FY2026 President's budget and House committee bill would have been effectuated by eliminating or substantially reducing (i.e., by more than half) funding for several major ED programs. For example, both the President's budget and the House committee bill proposed eliminating the English Language Acquisition account, which funds programs authorized by Title III of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), as amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA; P.L. 114-95), and received $890 million in FY2025. Substantial reductions or eliminations also were proposed to the Safe Schools and Citizenship Education account, the Adult Education program, and several programs within the Higher Education account (e.g., International Education and Foreign Language (IEFL) programs, TRIO programs, and Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs [GEAR UP]). In general, these proposals were not adopted in the FY2026 LHHS omnibus.

Education for the Disadvantaged

The Education for the Disadvantaged account is the largest account related to elementary and secondary education and has been the second largest overall within ED (based on funding provided through the annual appropriations process) in recent years. Within the account, a majority of funds are for Grants to Local Educational Agencies, authorized under Title I-A of the ESEA. Title I-A grants provide supplementary educational and related services to low-achieving and other students attending elementary and secondary schools with relatively high concentrations of students from low-income families, as well as eligible students who live in the areas served by these public schools but attend private schools.¹⁰⁴

The enacted FY2026 appropriation for the Education for the Disadvantaged account was $19.1 billion, a 0.1% (+$20 million) increase from both the enacted FY2024 and FY2025 levels of just over $19.1 billion. Of the $19.1 billion appropriated for the account, $18.4 billion was provided for Title I-A grants. The President's budget requested $18.4 billion for the Education for the Disadvantaged account, which would have been provided for Title I-A grants only. The Senate committee bill would have provided $19.2 billion in discretionary funding for the account, of which $18.5 billion would have been provided for Title I-A.

The House committee bill proposed a substantially lower level of funding for the account. It would have provided a funding level of $13.9 billion for the account, with $13.7 billion designated for the Title I-A program and the remainder provided for two literacy programs. These amounts included a proposed rescission of $938 million in FY2026 advance appropriations that had been provided in the FY2025 full-year CR.¹⁰⁵ All told, this funding level would have represented a decrease of $4.7 billion (-25.6%) for the Title I-A program relative to FY2024 and FY2025. The House committee report argued that the higher level of funding is not needed for the Title I-A program as "Federal tax dollars have not been shown to result in meaningful improvement in student achievement." ¹⁰⁶

School Improvement

The School Improvement account provides funding for several elementary and secondary education formula grant programs authorized by the ESEA as well as other programs such as funding for the education of homeless children. While the FY2026 LHHS omnibus and the FY2026 Senate committee bill provided $5.8 billion, a $5 million increase (less than 0.1%) from FY2024 and FY2025 levels for this account, the FY2026 budget request proposed eliminating funding for all existing programs in the account and creating a new $2 billion block grant program for elementary and secondary education. The rationale provided in the accompanying materials for these program eliminations was "the Administration's overall effort to restore fiscal discipline and reduce the Federal role in education."¹⁰⁷ The House committee bill proposed $3.2 billion for this account, a $2.6 billion reduction (-45.3%) compared with the FY2024 and FY2025 levels. The majority of the reduction in the House committee bill would have been the result of not providing new FY2026 funding for the Supporting Effective Instruction program and rescinding the FY2026 advance appropriations provided for the program in the FY2025 full-year CR. The report accompanying the House committee bill stated of this proposed reduction that "This funding has not been shown to improve teacher quality or advance student achievement."¹⁰⁸

Innovation and Improvement

The Innovation and Improvement account provides funding for several elementary and secondary education competitive grant programs authorized by the ESEA, including funding for charter schools, magnet schools, teachers and school leaders, and American history and civics education. The FY2026 enacted level for this account of $1.2 billion was $12 million lower (-0.1%) than the FY2025 enacted level and provides funding for all of the programs that received funding in FY2025. The FY2026 budget request proposed to eliminate funding for all programs in this account except for $500 million for the Charter Schools. The rationale provided in the accompanying materials for these program eliminations was "the Administration's overall effort to restore fiscal discipline and reduce the Federal role in education."¹⁰⁹ The House committee bill also would have eliminated funding for several programs, such as Teacher and School Leader Incentive Grants and the Magnet School Assistance Program.

The FY2026 LHHS omnibus included statutory language specifying that the activities authorized by the ESEA in this account "shall be for the purposes and in the amounts specified in the 'Final Bill' column for Innovation and Improvement" in the LHHS appropriations table included in the explanatory statement accompanying the act. Previously, these funding amounts had been specified in the explanatory statement only, but were incorporated into the law itself by reference for FY2026.

Institute of Education Sciences

The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) provides education research, data, statistics, and evaluation. For example, IES evaluates federal education programs, collects and reports education statistics, and administers the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The FY2026 LHHS omnibus provided $790 million for IES, which was $4 million less (-0.4%) than was provided in FY2024 and FY2025. The FY2026 President's budget requested $261 million, which was $532 million lower (-67.1%) than the FY2024 and FY2025 levels. The budget request proposed to fund only NAEP and related activities and provide a lump sum for IES "to meet statutory requirements, continue critical data collections and studies, and fund administrative expenses in the short-term."¹¹⁰ The House committee bill proposed funding IES at $740 million, $53 million less (-6.6%) than the FY2024 and FY2025 levels, while the Senate committee bill proposed level funding for IES.

The FY2026 LHHS omnibus included statutory language specifying that necessary expenses for IES that are authorized by various laws, such as the Department of Education Organization Act and the National Assessment of Educational Progress Assistance Act, "shall be for the purposes and in the amounts specified in the 'Final Bill' column for Institute of Education Sciences" in the LHHS appropriations table included in the explanatory statement accompanying the act. In general, these types of line items had previously been specified in the explanatory statement only, but were incorporated into the law itself by reference for FY2026.

Departmental Management

The FY2026 LHHS omnibus provided $607 million for departmental management, which included $400 million for salaries and expenses, $140 million for the Office of Civil Rights (OCR), and $68 million for the Office of the Inspector General. This was $21 million less (-3.3%) than the FY2024 and FY2025 funding levels, with all of the reduction made to salaries and expenses. The FY2026 President's budget and House committee bill proposed $447 million, which was $180 million less (-28.8%) than the FY2024 and FY2025 amounts, and would have reduced funding for salaries and expenses by $127 million and OCR by $49 million. The Senate committee bill proposed $587 million for departmental management, which was $40 million less (-6.4%) than what was provided in FY2024 and FY2025. Salaries and expenses would have been reduced by $40 million compared to the previous levels.

The Departmental Management account has previously included language related to staffing levels for the ED Budget Service and general limits on the number of ED non-career employees. The FY2026 LHHS omnibus added to this language the proviso, "That the Department of Education shall support staffing levels necessary to fulfill its statutory responsibilities including carrying out programs, projects, and activities funded in this title of this Act in a timely manner." The FY2026 Senate committee bill proposed new language that was not included in the FY2026 LHHS omnibus focused on maintaining staffing levels at the Budget Service that were in effect on January 1, 2024. The FY2026 House committee bill and the President's budget proposed to entirely omit the language in the account on staffing.

Additional ED Issues for FY2026

The FY2026 appropriations cycle for ED was affected by several novel circumstances arising in the previous fiscal year. This included ED entering into and implementing IAAs whereby ED and another federal agency (the performing agency) agree that the performing agency will perform certain tasks to assist ED in implementing programs that ED is required by statute to administer. ED also took new actions affecting when certain funds were made available to grantees in the prior year.

Interagency Agreements

In 2025, ED entered into a series of IAAs with various federal agencies, including DOL and HHS, to assist ED in the tasks required to carry out programs administered by ED.¹¹¹ According to ED, the IAAs were to "streamline federal education activities on the legally required programs, reduce administrative burdens, and refocus programs and activities to better serve students and grantees."¹¹² In discussing the IAAs, the Secretary of Education stated that the "Trump Administration is taking bold action to break up the federal education bureaucracy and return education to the states."¹¹³

Congress addressed ED's use of the IAAs in the explanatory statement that accompanied the FY2026 LHHS omnibus. It stated that funding is provided to ED to carry out programs specified in law, and noted that the FY2026 LHHS omnibus "continues a provision that prohibits the transfer of such funding to another federal agency unless such transfer authority is provided in an appropriations law." ¹¹⁴ Further, the explanatory statement maintained that

no authorities exist for the Department of Education to transfer its fundamental responsibilities under numerous authorizing and appropriations laws, including through procuring services from other Federal agencies, of carrying out those programs, projects, and activities to other Federal agencies.

The explanatory statement, in discussing the IAAs, specifically noted that there are concerns about the "assignment of such programmatic responsibilities to agencies that do not have the experience, expertise or capacity to carry out these programs and activities and lack developed relationships with relevant stakeholders, including States." Further, the explanatory statement declared that "fragmenting responsibilities for education programs across multiple agencies" will create inefficiencies, result in additional costs, and cause delays and administrative challenges in federal education funding reaching the state and local levels. In addition, concerns were raised that the use of the IAAs will "weaken Federal support to protect the rights of students, children, youth, and families under Federal educations laws."

In the explanatory statement, Congress also directed ED to provide biweekly briefings to the relevant committees on the implementation of any IAAs. This included providing information on topics such as staffing transfers, implementation costs, metrics of the delivery of services, rates of accessing funds by grantees, and monitoring updates on grantees' compliance with all federal requirements.

Forward Funding for Formula Grant Programs

The FY2026 LHHS omnibus included a new general provision (§312) requiring the Secretary of Education to award formula grant funding for specified programs "on the date such funds become available for obligation." This provision targeted formula grant programs authorized by the ESEA, McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act, and Adult Education and Family Literacy Act that received appropriations in the FY2026 LHHS omnibus. The provision seemed to respond to certain delays in the availability of forward funds for certain formula grant programs in the prior year.¹¹⁵

In FY2025, ED departed from its long-standing practice of making forward funds for certain federal education formula grant funds available to state grantees on July 1. Forward funds become available for obligation and expenditure during the last quarter of the fiscal year, and ED has generally obligated and made the funds available on the first day of that quarter (July 1). ED's initial inaction in making formula grant funds available to states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the outlying areas,¹¹⁶ and the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) on July 1 affected FY2025 forward funds for the following programs authorized by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA):¹¹⁷

• Title I-C: Education of Migratory Children
• Title II-A: Supporting Effective Instruction
• Title III-A: English Language Acquisition
• Title IV-A: Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants
• Title IV-B: 21^st Century Community Learning Centers (21^st CCLC)

In addition to the ESEA programs, ED did not make available to states, the District of Columbia, or Puerto Rico¹¹⁸ FY2025 forward funds that became available to ED on July 1, for formula grants¹¹⁹ under two adult education programs authorized by Title II of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA): the Adult Basic and Literacy Education State Grants and the Integrated English Literacy and Civics Education State Grants. On July 25, 2025, reports indicated that OMB had completed a programmatic review of the affected ESEA and WIOA programs and that ED would release funds for the remaining affected programs the following week.¹²⁰

Related Agencies

All amounts in this section are based on regular LHHS appropriations only; they do not include funds provided outside of the annual appropriations process (e.g., mandatory appropriations for Social Security benefit payments). All amounts in this section are rounded (e.g., to the nearest million), as labeled. The dollar changes and percentage changes in the text are based on unrounded amounts. For consistency with source materials, amounts do not reflect sequestration or re-estimates of mandatory spending programs, where applicable.

FY2026 Caveats

The calculation of amounts for the FY2026 President's budget request is affected by rescissions that were proposed for the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), discussed below. These and other adjustments are also documented in the notes to Table 10 and Table 11.

FY2026 Related Agencies Appropriations Overview

Table 10 displays FY2026 proposed and enacted funding levels for LHHS Related Agencies, along with enacted levels for FY2024 and FY2025. Following the conventions in this report, the totals in this table do not include emergency-designated appropriations; however, note that the LHHS Related Agencies received no emergency-designated appropriations in FY2024, FY2025, or FY2026.

In general, discretionary funding constitutes about 20% of total appropriations for LHHS Related Agencies each year. The FY2026 LHHS omnibus increased discretionary appropriations for Related Agencies by 1.0% compared to FY2025. The FY2026 President's budget would have decreased discretionary appropriations for Related Agencies by 15.4%, the FY2026 House committee bill would have decreased them by 3.8%, and the FY2026 Senate committee bill would have increased them by 1.3%.

The largest share of funding appropriated to Related Agencies in the LHHS bill consistently goes to SSA. When taking into account both mandatory and discretionary funding, SSA usually represents 97% of total appropriations to Related Agencies in the LHHS bill. The bulk of mandatory funding provided to SSA from the LHHS bill supports the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, which provides means-tested cash assistance to adults and children with qualifying disabilities and to seniors aged 65 or older.

When looking exclusively at discretionary funding, SSA usually receives about 85% of discretionary appropriations for LHHS Related Agencies. After SSA, the next-largest related agency in terms of appropriations is usually the CNCS, which usually accounts for less than 2% of total appropriations and about 7% of discretionary appropriations to LHHS Related Agencies.¹²¹ Typically, each of the remaining agencies receives less than $1 billion from the annual LHHS appropriations bill. For more information, see Table 11.

Selected Related Agencies Highlights

The following sections highlight FY2026 appropriations issues for selected agencies, programs, or accounts within Related Agencies. Table 11 tracks funding levels for the Related Agencies.

SSA Limitation on Administrative Expenses (LAE)

The SSA LAE account consists mainly of funds that are used by SSA to administer the Social Security and SSI programs and to support CMS in administering portions of Medicare.¹²² The account also contains funds that are specifically set aside for certain program integrity activities, such as continuing disability reviews and SSI nonmedical redeterminations. The FY2026 LHHS omnibus provided $14.8 billion to the LAE account, a $544 million (+3.8%) increase from FY2025 and a $616 million (+4.3%) increase relative to FY2024. The FY2026 President's budget and the FY2026 House committee bill would have provided $494 million (+3.5%) more for the LAE account relative to FY2025, and the FY2026 Senate committee bill would have increased LAE funding by $594 million (+4.2%).

Of the $14.8 billion provided to the LAE account for FY2026, $2.4 billion (16.2% of this total) was dedicated to program integrity activities. The program integrity portion of the LAE account for FY2026 includes $273 million in base funding and $2.1 billion in adjustment funding (see the Appendix for further information). These same amounts were proposed in the President's budget, the House committee bill, and the Senate committee bill.

Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS)

The CNCS, operating as AmeriCorps, is an independent federal agency that administers a variety of national and community service programs.¹²³ The FY2026 LHHS omnibus provided $1.3 billion in total CNCS funding, a $226 million (+22.0%) increase from FY2025 and a $234 million (+22.9%) increase relative to FY2024. The FY2026 President's budget requested $108 million in new funds that would have been used to execute an orderly shutdown of CNCS operations and a $200 million rescission of balances in the National Service Trust, for a net total of -$92 million.¹²⁴ Both the FY2026 House committee bill and the FY2026 Senate committee bill declined the President's proposal to entirely cease CNCS operations. The House committee bill would have decreased total CNCS funding by $385 million (-37.4%) relative to FY2025, and the Senate committee bill would have increased total CNCS funding by $225 million (+21.9%).

The FY2026 LHHS omnibus also added multiple line items for specified activities under the CNCS Operating Expenses heading. In general, these types of line items had previously been specified in the explanatory statement only, but the FY2026 LHHS omnibus incorporated these line items into the law by reference.¹²⁵

Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)

The IMLS is a federal agency that provides grants to U.S. libraries, archives, and museums. The FY2026 LHHS omnibus provided $292 million for this agency. This was the same amount that was proposed by the FY2026 House committee bill and the FY2026 Senate committee bill, and a $3 million (-1.0%) decrease relative to FY2024 and FY2025 enacted. The FY2026 President's budget proposed the elimination of the IMLS, requesting $6 million to conduct an orderly shutdown. The budget request framed the proposed elimination as resulting from "the Administration's commitment to balancing the budget while providing adequate funding for critical nondefense discretionary priorities and resetting the proper balance between Federal and State responsibilities."¹²⁶

The FY2026 LHHS omnibus also added roughly one-dozen line items for specified activities within the IMLS account (e.g., $181 million for grants to states under the Library Services Technology Act). In general, these types of line items had previously been specified in the explanatory statement only, but the FY2026 LHHS omnibus incorporated these line items into the law by reference.¹²⁷

National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)

The NLRB is an independent board that enforces provisions in the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). The FY2026 LHHS omnibus provided $294 million in total NLRB funding, a $5 million (-1.7%) decrease relative to FY2024 and FY2025. The FY2026 President's budget would have provided $14 million (-4.7%) less in total NLRB funding relative to FY2025, the FY2026 House committee bill would have decreased total NLRB funding by $99 million (-33.2%), and the FY2026 Senate committee bill would have decreased total NLRB funding by the same amount as the FY2026 LHHS omnibus.

The FY2026 LHHS omnibus retained a provision that has been included in the LHHS bill since FY2012 that prohibits any funds appropriated to the NLRB in the bill, or any prior appropriations act, from being used to issue a directive or regulation to provide employees a means of voting through any electronic method in an election determining representation for collective bargaining (§409).

Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB)

The CPB was a private, nonprofit corporation created by Congress that served as the primary custodian of federal investment in public broadcasting.¹²⁸ Beginning with the Public Broadcasting Financing Act of 1975 (P.L. 94-192), Congress provided two-year advance appropriations to the CPB until it was defunded.¹²⁹ On July 24, 2025, lawmakers rescinded a combined $1.1 billion in FY2026 and FY2027 advance appropriations for the CPB as part of the Rescissions Act of 2025 (P.L. 119-28). (These advance appropriations had been enacted in the FY2024 LHHS omnibus [P.L. 118-47] and the FY2025 full-year CR [P.L. 119-4].) On August 1, 2025, the CPB announced that it would cease operations in January 2026 due to a lack of funding.¹³⁰ On January 5, 2026, the CPB announced its intention to dissolve the organization.¹³¹

The FY2026 LHHS omnibus did not provide any funding for the CPB. The FY2026 President's budget did not request any new funding for the CPB and proposed to rescind most of the FY2026 advance appropriation and all of the FY2027 advance appropriation ($1.0 billion total). The President's budget proposed to retain $30 million of the FY2026 advance appropriation to conduct an orderly closeout of federal funding for the CPB.¹³² Both the FY2026 House committee bill and the FY2026 Senate committee bill—which were reported after the enactment of the Rescissions Act of 2025—did not include any funding for the CPB.

Appendix. LHHS and Budget Enforcement

Congress has historically used various methods to limit total discretionary funding levels for a fiscal year, as well as the discretionary funding that will be allocated for LHHS. These methods have included statutory limits on the applicable spending, procedural limits on such spending, and more informal agreements between the House and Senate. In addition, certain funding in the LHHS bill is affected by the mandatory spending sequester derived from the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 (P.L. 119-177; BBEDCA), as amended (most recently by P.L. 117-328, enacted on December 29, 2022).

After summarizing the status of mandatory sequestration and budget enforcement for the FY2026 appropriations cycle, this appendix presents current-year FY2026 LHHS budgetary amounts in Table A-1 and Table A-2.

The BBEDCA Mandatory Sequestration

For deficit-reduction purposes, the BBEDCA (as amended) requires mandatory spending reductions to occur through sequestration in each of FY2013 through FY2032 (and through FY2033 for Medicare only).¹³³

On May 30, 2025, concurrent with the release of the President's budget submission, President Trump issued the required FY2026 sequestration order, calling for nonexempt mandatory spending to be reduced on October 1, 2026.¹³⁴ At that time, OMB announced that the FY2026 sequestration percentages would equal 2% of nonexempt Medicare spending and 5.7% of other nonexempt nondefense mandatory spending, for a total reduction of $33 billion in FY2026.¹³⁵ (OMB also announced an 8.3% reduction, totaling $2.4 billion, in nonexempt defense mandatory spending, which does not affect LHHS funds.)

The BBEDCA includes a number of statutory exemptions to sequestration and other special rules that are relevant for the appropriated mandatory spending in the LHHS bill. For instance, the LHHS bill contains several programs that are exempt from sequestration, including Medicaid, payments to health care trust funds, Supplemental Security Income, Special Benefits for Disabled Coal Miners, retirement pay and medical benefits for commissioned Public Health Service officers, foster care and adoption assistance, and certain family support payments. The LHHS bill also contains several programs that are subject to special rules under sequestration, such as health centers and portions of Medicare.¹³⁶

Statutory Discretionary Spending Limits for FY2026

No statutory discretionary limits were in effect for FY2026 during consideration of annual LHHS appropriations. For background, FY2024 and FY2025 statutory limits on discretionary spending were enacted as part of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 (FRA; P.L. 118-5) on June 3, 2023.¹³⁷ The FRA amended the BBEDCA to provide limits on defense discretionary (all spending under budget function 050) and nondefense discretionary (all other spending) for those two fiscal years. All funding in the LHHS bill is subject to the nondefense limit, and the bill has the largest share of such spending compared to the other annual appropriations bills. (Prior to the FRA, statutory limits on discretionary spending had been in effect from FY2012 through FY2021.¹³⁸)

For LHHS programs and activities, the FRA provided for adjustments to the nondefense spending limit for health care fraud and abuse control, continuing disability reviews and redeterminations, and re-employment services and eligibility assessments, up to a specified amount of funding for each of FY2024 and FY2025.¹³⁹ The maximum amount of funding allowed for these LHHS adjustments was $2.447 billion in total in FY2024 and $2.531 billion in FY2025. Although no such adjustment funding was provided pursuant to statutory limits for FY2026 (as none were in effect), such funding was legislatively designated in the FY2026 LHHS omnibus, totaling $3.014 billion. (See the "Exceptions to Budget Enforcement" section of this report for more information.)

Budget Resolution, 302(b) Suballocations

The procedural elements of budget enforcement generally stem from requirements under the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 (P.L. 93-44) that are associated with the adoption of an annual budget resolution. Through this process, the Appropriations Committee in each chamber receives a procedural limit on the total amount of discretionary budget authority for the upcoming fiscal year, referred to as a 302(a) allocation. The Appropriations Committee subsequently divides this allocation among its 12 subcommittees. These subcommittee-level spending limits are referred to as 302(b) suballocations. The 302(b) suballocations restrict the amount of budget authority available to each subcommittee for the agencies, projects, and activities under its jurisdiction, effectively acting as a cap on each of the 12 regular appropriations bills. Enforcement of the 302(a) allocation and 302(b) suballocations occurs through points of order.¹⁴⁰

When the FY2026 LHHS omnibus was enacted on February 3, 2026, no formal House or Senate mechanisms to impose limits on discretionary spending were in effect.¹⁴¹ Neither chamber had considered a budget resolution prior to that date, and no statutory discretionary spending limits had been enacted. Moreover, neither chamber had taken steps to provide a formal alternative means of budget enforcement for appropriations, such as through a so-called deeming resolution or by unanimous consent.¹⁴²

In the absence of these mechanisms, the House and Senate Appropriations Committees operated under informal suballocations to guide the consideration of appropriations until there was an eventual bicameral agreement on funding levels. The House Appropriations Committee voted to report its draft interim suballocations for all 12 subcommittees, including LHHS (35-26), on July 17, 2025. (Ultimately, these draft suballocations were not reported to the House.) No such suballocations were voted on by the Senate Appropriations Committee. These suballocations are displayed in Table A-1.

Exceptions to Budget Enforcement

Prior to FY2026, certain federal spending was made effectively exempt from discretionary budget enforcement (both the previously mentioned statutory spending caps and 302(a) and 302(b) limits) by a mechanism that is commonly referred to as an adjustment. An adjustment increases the applicable spending limit to accommodate additional specified funding. Adjustments to the 302(a) and 302(b) limits are typically specified in the budget resolution.¹⁴³ For any applicable statutory spending limits, these adjustments can be made under Section 251(b) of the BBEDCA.¹⁴⁴

Despite there being no statutory spending limits or procedural enforcement subject to a budget resolution, funding in the FY2026 LHHS omnibus for purposes that would normally have triggered spending limit adjustments was legislatively designated as such. These are summarized below:

• Reemployment services and eligibility assessments. Funding for this adjustment was for a DOL program providing grants to states under Section 306 of the Social Security Act for certain claimants of regular Unemployment Compensation, as defined in such section. For FY2024, the amount that was legislatively designated was $350 million in additional new budget authority, plus $117 million in funds that normally would have been subject to the spending limits (sometimes referred to as base funding).¹⁴⁵
• Health care fraud and abuse control. Funding for this adjustment was for the health care fraud abuse control program at CMS (in HHS). For FY2026, the amount that was legislatively designated was $630 million in additional new budget authority, plus $311 million in funds that normally would have been subject to the spending limits (sometimes referred to as base funding).
• Continuing disability reviews and redeterminations. Funding for this adjustment was for the costs associated with conducting continuing disability reviews, SSI nonmedical redeterminations of eligibility, co-operative disability investigation units, and the prosecution of fraud in the programs and operations of the SSA by Special Assistant U.S. Attorneys. For FY2026, the amount that was legislatively designated was $2.1 billion in additional new budget authority, plus $273 million in funds that normally would have been subject to the spending limits (sometimes referred to as base funding).

Separate from these cap adjustments, the 21^st Century Cures Act (Cures Act, P.L. 114-255), which was enacted on December 13, 2016, includes additional budget enforcement procedures related to the discretionary spending limits.¹⁴⁶ For the purposes of FY2026 LHHS appropriations, these procedures apply only to the NIH Innovation Account that was created by the act.¹⁴⁷ The Cures Act provides that discretionary appropriations from this account (up to the amount authorized) are to be subtracted from any cost estimates provided for purposes of budget controls. Thus, the Cures Act ensures that appropriations from this account will not count against any spending limits, such as those associated with the budget resolution for an applicable fiscal year. For FY2026, these Cures Act funds allowed in the LHHS bill totaled $226 million, which was $181 million (-44.5%) less than the amount authorized for FY2024 ($407 million), and $99 million (+78.0) more than the amount authorized for FY2025 ($127 million).

FY2026 LHHS Discretionary Spending Subject to Budget Enforcement

Table A-1 displays the CBO estimate of enacted LHHS discretionary appropriations for FY2024 and FY2025, alongside the FY2026 House and Senate committee bills, and the CBO estimate of FY2026 enacted. (Comparable CBO estimates for the President's budget are not available.) The amounts shown for "regular discretionary appropriations" represent current-year budget authority, which had typically been subject to spending limits (though not for FY2026). Regular discretionary appropriations for certain legislatively designated categories (e.g., program integrity adjustments and emergency-designated spending) are not counted for purposes of spending limit enforcement. Regular discretionary appropriations funding incorporates the budgetary effects of any applicable CBO scorekeeping adjustments that offset the cost of the funding in the bill (e.g., rescissions of previously enacted funding, changes to mandatory program spending included in the bill). The FY2026 LHHS omnibus provided $194.9 billion in funding, which is $3.2 billion (-1.6%) less than the FY2025 enacted level, and $470 million (+0.2%) more than the FY2024 enacted level. The FY2026 House committee bill would have provided $184.5 billion in funding, which would have been $13.7 billion (-7%) less than FY2025 enacted, and $9.9 billion (-5%) less than FY2024 enacted.¹⁴⁸ The Senate committee bill would have provided $196.974 billion, which would have been $1.200 billion (-0.6%) less than FY2025 enacted, and $2.500 billion (+1.3%) more than FY2024 enacted.

Certain LHHS appropriations, such as those allowed for program integrity funding or designated for emergency requirements, may be effectively exempt from the discretionary spending limits. Although those limits were not in effect at the time that the FY2026 LHHS omnibus was enacted, the law nevertheless included legislative identification of certain categories of funds under these adjustments. The "adjusted appropriations" total in the table includes funding under these adjustments, plus "regular discretionary appropriations." The FY2026 LHHS omnibus provided $3.1 billion in program integrity adjustments, which was $573 million (+22.6%) more than FY2025, and $657 million (+26.9%) more than FY2024. These same amounts were proposed by the FY2026 Senate committee bill. The FY2026 House committee bill would have provided a total of $2.8 billion in funding subject to the program integrity adjustments, which would have been $223 million (+9%) more than the total amount allowed for those adjustments in FY2025 ($2.5 billion), and $307 million (+12.5%) more than FY2024. Neither the FY2026 LHHS omnibus nor the earlier congressional proposals included FY2026 funding for emergency requirements adjustments.

Current-Year Budget Authority

Table A-2 displays the total LHHS current-year budget authority, by title. Unlike the prior table, the amounts shown here have not been adjusted for congressional scorekeeping. The totals in this table exclude funds designated as an emergency requirement. The amounts shown reflect total budget authority available for obligation in the fiscal year, regardless of the year in which it was first appropriated. (In other words, these amounts exclude advance appropriations for future years, but include advance appropriations from prior years that became available in the applicable current year. (For a comparable table showing total budget authority in the bill, rather than current-year budget authority, see Table 2 in this report.) As mentioned above, it is current-year budget authority (adjusted for scorekeeping by CBO) that is used to determine compliance with discretionary spending allocations.