The House Appropriations Committee leadership has released the text of the fiscal year 2026 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies (LHHS-ED) appropriations bill. As expected, the bill makes deep cuts to education and job training programs, though not as extensive as those proposed in the Trump administration’s FY 26 budget.
Nonetheless, while there are bright spots, the measure would reduce or eliminate funding for several programs of interest to community colleges.
All the bill’s program-level details are not yet known, as some of that information is contained in an accompanying committee report that will be released when the full appropriations committee marks up the bill, likely sometime next week. But the bill text and accompanying materials released by both committee Republicans and Democrats tell much of the story. The LHHS-ED appropriations subcommittee approved the bill late Tuesday afternoon.
Programs facing cuts
Overall, according to the committee Democrats’ materials, funding in the bill was cut by $23.9 billion (11%), including reductions of $12.1 billion (15%) to the Education Department and $4 billion (30%) for the Department of Labor (DOL).
As in the administration’s budget, some programs of great interest to community colleges were eliminated entirely, including Adult Basic Education, Childcare Access Means Parents in School and the Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants. Final details may reveal other relevant program eliminations.
Other programs would be cut substantially, including Federal Work Study (37%) and DOL’s Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act job training grants (63%).
Notable programs that were level-funded or slightly increased include the Pell Grant maximum award ($7,395), Perkins Career and Technical Education (+$23 million), TRIO, GEAR-UP, Apprenticeship Grants and the Strengthening Community College Training Grants. HEA Title III and V programs appear to have gotten a slight bump, but this is one area where the committee report is crucial to knowing how those funds were allocated between programs, as the president has proposed eliminating Title III-A.
Other programs proposed for elimination whose fate remains unknown include the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education’s Basic Needs Grants and Postsecondary Student Success Grants.
In contrast to Senate plan
The House bill’s cuts stand in stark contrast to the LHHS-ED appropriations bill that the Senate Appropriations Committee approved in late July. In that bill, most community college priorities were level-funded, which probably represents the higher watermark for most programs this year.
The House committee’s actions are a key step forward, but the resolution of the FY 26 funding process remains cloudy. Any final funding bill must garner bipartisan support to be enacted, and when it comes to spending, the parties are generally at loggerheads.
Part of this tension derives from FY 25 funds that Congress rescinded on a party-line vote, as well as the billions of additional FY 25 dollars yet to be spent by the Trump administration — and which may never be spent. The latter may take the form of the “pocket rescissions” that the administration has been contemplating, and in one area has acted upon.
All these issues will come to a head at the end of the federal fiscal year at the end of the month, leading to speculation about the possibility of a government shutdown given the intensity of the disagreements.
