Dive Brief:
- Congressional lawmakers this week released a fiscal 2026 education budget proposal that rejects the Trump administration's call to dramatically decrease funding for the U.S. Department of Education and to cut major financial aid programs.
- The Senate and House Appropriations committees jointly proposed allocating $79 billion in discretionary funding to the Education Department, up slightly from the $78.7 billion it received for the 2025 fiscal year. The Trump administration had proposed cutting the agency's funding by 15.3%, to $66.7 billion.
- The bipartisan proposal would also keep funding level for a suite of student support and educational access programs that would have seen their funding slashed or been defunded altogether under President Donald Trump's plan.
Dive Insight:
Trump has made shuttering the Education Department a policy goal, directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon in a March executive order to “take all necessary steps" to facilitate its closure. Only Congress can fully eliminate the department, but his administration has begun hollowing it out through mass layoffs, grant cancellations, and plans to transfer program management to other agencies.
The Trump administration sought to decrease the maximum Pell Grant award by about 23% to $5,710, an amount it said would "continue to cover the average published in-state tuition and fees for community college students." Instead, lawmakers are looking to maintain the maximum Pell Grant award at $7,395 through the 2026-27 year.
Trump's spending proposal for fiscal 2026 also sought to defund three key educational access programs: TRIO, the Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants, and Gear Up.
TRIO, which supports students from disadvantaged backgrounds from middle school to college, would receive $1.2 billion dollars under the lawmakers' proposal. The FSEOG program, which assists undergraduates who demonstrate significant financial need, would receive $910 million. And Gear Up, which helps low-income students prepare for postsecondary education, would get $388 million.
Each program's allocation would be on par with what it received in fiscal 2025.
The congressional plan would also maintain funding for Federal Work-Study, which provides part-time jobs to students who need help paying for college, at $1.2 billion. Trump's plan would have slashed the program's budget by roughly 80% to $250 million.
The Education Department's Office for Civil Rights funding would continue at $140 million under the lawmakers' proposal, according to a bill summary released by Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee. Trump had sought to cut the office's budget by a third.
As part of Trump's effort to dismantle the Education Department, administration officials have announced plans to outsource the programs to four other federal agencies.
However, lawmakers wrote in an explanatory statement accompanying their proposal that "no authorities exist for the Department of Education to transfer its fundamental responsibilities" and that it cannot transfer its congressionally allocated funds to another agency.
Democrats on the Senate committee argued in their bill summary that the Trump administration's interagency agreements are illegal, create "new inefficiencies, costs, and risks to funding for states and schools” and threaten “educational outcomes."
Under the budget proposal, the Education Department and the four agencies it struck agreements with would be required to make biweekly reports to legislators, according to the explanatory statement. Briefings would include information related to the interagency agreements, such as costs, staff transfers, "metrics on the delivery of services," and "plans for maintaining high standards of quality and objectivity in grant competitions through multireviewer peer panels."
Lawmakers have until Jan. 30 to pass the remaining appropriations bills for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, or they will face a partial federal government shutdown. Congress approved a stopgap funding measure in November to end the last government shutdown, the longest in U.S. history.
