This week, the House will most likely pass another “minibus” appropriations package to fully fund a few more departments for Fiscal Year 2026. This legislation covers two of the remaining Fiscal Year 2026 appropriation bills that have yet to pass Congress, including Financial Services and General Government and National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs.
It is important to point out that the bill does significantly reduce spending: $9 billion below both FY 2025 spending levels and projected levels under the current continuing resolution funding the government. It continues efforts made in the Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) minibus to unwind Biden-era spending priorities on various progressive mandates. It also increases spending on public-facing taxpayer services at the IRS.
With the federal budget running nearly $2 trillion annual deficits, spending less in the upcoming fiscal year than in the current one is a welcome step in the right direction. Lowering topline levels in FY 2026 is a core priority for NTU and we appreciate lawmakers fulfilling this goal.
However, this bill includes some provisions that will hurt the interests of taxpayers, including:
Blocking any increase in funding to the Office of Management and Budget - limiting its ability to further reorganize government to better serve taxpayers
Providing $643 million for the U.S. Agency for Global Media—below the $867 million provided for FY 2025—even as President Trump has largely shuttered the agency, which once ran Voice of America, and proposed its termination in his FY 2026 budget request
Fully funding the Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund, a wasteful, redundant program that the Administration has tried to shut down
Restoring $20 million to the U.S. Institute of Peace, a duplicative agency previously shut down by the Administration that had its FY 2025 funding eliminated by the rescissions package approved by Congress
Continuing the antiquated tradition of providing a full year’s congressional salary ($174,000) to heirs of members who pass away while in office, a perk provided on top of generous statutory survivor benefits.
The bill would also create a large program, the America First Opportunity Fund, that would pay for various Administration national security and foreign affairs priorities, with virtually no congressional guidance. With our high levels of federal debt, now is not the time to create a new $850 million program.
This legislation also contains many earmarks, which have now been renamed “Community Project Funding.” While we understand that, at times, members of Congress may have a better understanding of certain spending needs than federal agencies, taxpayers benefit when federal spending is allocated according to need, not doled out for political purposes. This helps keep more egregious earmarks from being funded, wasting taxpayer dollars.
NTUF’s Vice President of Research Demian Brady compiled earmarks from the Appropriations Committees’ documents into a sortable spreadsheet, available for download here. An analysis of the earmarks in this minibus reveals 173 earmarks, with a total cost of nearly $151 million. Egregious examples of wasteful federal earmark spending include:
$5 million to the University of Kansas’s Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics to digitize Senator Dole’s Senate archives
$200,000 to the Lincoln Center for recording oral histories
$174,000 for digitizing the Battle of Homestead Foundation Labor History Archives
$57,000 to America’s Routes to promote tourism in Virginia
While we appreciate the fact that this legislation is very transparent about these “community project funding” programs, there are generally better ways to spend taxpayer funds. Or, considering our nation is currently facing a federal debt load of over $38 trillion, Congress should make the prudent decision of foregoing spending on these projects altogether. Especially considering the fact that this legislation walks away from the chance to bank opportunities to reduce federal spending created by the Trump Administration, spending on pet projects in congressional districts is inappropriate in the current fiscal environment.