September 2025
The House Appropriations Committee held markup hearings for the FY 2026 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (LHHS) and Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) bills in September. The committee advanced the LHHS bill by a 35–28 vote on September 9 and the CJS bill by a 34-28 vote on September 10.
Both bills propose cuts for agencies supporting education research and statistics, though less severe than the president’s budget request.
Institute of Education Sciences
The House FY 2026 LHHS bill includes $740.4 million for the Institute of Sciences (IES), a 6.6 percent cut compared with FY 2025. The bill also keeps most line items at FY 2024 levels, except for a $1 million increase for Statistics and the proposed elimination of funding for the Regional Educational Laboratories (RELs). Overall, the bill is a marked contrast with the president’s budget request, which proposed a 66 percent cut to IES, with much of the funding unallocated except for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Details on IES in the FY 2026 Senate bill are noted in the August AERA Highlights.
The LHHS report language contains a few directives for IES:
National Institutes of Health
The House FY 2026 LHHS bill includes $47.8 billion for NIH, a cut of less than one percent compared with FY 2025. Within NIH, the bill includes $1.76 billion for the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the same as FY 2025 levels. Details on IES in the FY 2026 Senate bill are noted in the August AERA Highlights.
Notably, the House FY 2026 LHHS bill does not incorporate the proposal in the president’s budget request to consolidate NIH centers and institutes. The report language notes the work that the House Appropriations Committee and House Energy and Commerce Committee began in 2024 to consider a reorganization of NIH and expresses willingness to work with administration on “innovative ideas.”
National Science Foundation
The House CJS bill includes $7 billion for NSF. Like the administration’s budget request, the bill would fold funding for the STEM Education Directorate into the overall Research and Related Activities account. The amount in the House CJS bill would be a $2 billion cut compared with FY 2025, a 22 percent decrease. Additional details on the House and Senate CJS bills are included in the July AERA Highlights.
The report language includes support for “the Administration’s efforts to increase American competitiveness by refocusing STEM investments into programs that serve all Americans.” It also backs several NSF initiatives, including increasing STEM participation in rural communities, scaling and sustaining education research, and curricula development for artificial intelligence. The language also encourages NSF to “develop best practices that enhance graduate education, to study the impact of funding models on graduate student productivity and outcomes, and to set clear mentorship standards in Federally funded projects.”
Amidst these markups, the CJS and LHHS bills passed by the Senate Appropriations Committee during the summer have not been taken up by the full Senate, with the September 30 government funding deadline on the horizon. Discussions are underway on a continuing resolution that would extend FY 2025 levels while the appropriations process moves forward.