Leg Branch Bill Advances in Senate
The House and Senate's competing visions for the Legislative Branch
Previously, in the First Branch Forecast, House Appropriators proposed and favorably reported legislation that would lay waste to the Legislative branch. It would cut funding for the Government Accountability Office by half, decimate funding for the Library of Congress (i.e., a 10% cut), remove the GAO’s authority to file civil lawsuits when the White House unlawfully impounds appropriated funds, and more. The bill focused its anti-institutional firepower on items shared between the branches.
This followed White House assaults on the Legislative branch, including unlawful efforts to take over several legislative branch agencies. The Librarian of Congress was removed, apparently, and the final outcome of that constitutional confrontation is yet to be determined. The underlying context of Executive branch overrreach places Congressional independence in question. Congress’s key power is making spending decisions — will they abdicate that authority?
The House’s appropriations bill is institutional vandalism and we wondered whether the Senate would take a more measured approach. Fortunately, they have.
Senate appropriators favorably reported their bill 26-1. Below we will consider its provisions and contrast it with decisions made by House appropriators. The House passed their bill on a party line vote. At least one senior Republican House appropriator has given up on passing appropriations bills, commenting that they’re fine with a full year continuing resolution. Let’s hope the majority of the House doesn’t feel that way.
As usual, we will show our work. You can find the bill text, report language, amendment text, roll call votes, video, and everything else appropriations related on our helpful appropriations wiki.
House vs. Senate on Big Ticket Spending
Let’s start by looking at the big ticket Legislative branch items. With the help of Chris Nehls, we transformed the Legislative branch’s FY 2026 spending levels into a spreadsheet, and then we rolled up the 164 line items into a summary data table.
To make this easier to understand, we transformed this spreadsheet into the following chart focused on Legislative branch entities that will receive $800 million or more in funding.1
The House would cut GAO’s funds by 49% and the Senate would keep it flat, a differences of $396 million. The House’s funding level would result in the GAO firing 63% of its staff, or 2,200 people, and costing taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.
The House would cut the Library of Congress’s funds by 10% and the Senate would increase it by 5%, a difference of $129 million.
The House would increase funding for the Capitol Police by 10%, or $85 million, and the Senate would increase USCP funding by 6%, or $48 million.
The House only met half of the funds requested by House entities, but the Senate provided the vast majority of funds requested by Senate entities.2 The House increased funding for itself by 6%, or $106 million, but this falls short by $101 million of the request made by entities within the House. By contrast, the Senate increased its funding by 13%, or $178 million, falling short of the requested amount by $25 million.
Both the House and Senate agreed to reduce funding levels for the Architect of the Capitol by 16%, or by ~$130 million. The Architect had requested $1.3 billion, or $500 million more than either chamber recommended be appropriated in FY 2026. The AOC says those funds are necessary “to maintain the integrity and functionality of the Capitol complex. This includes, among other things, restoration of deferred maintenance and Capitol projects, critical security enhancements, workforce investments, and emergent critical mission requirements.”
The remaining major entities — the Government Publishing Office, Congressional Budget Office, Joint Entities (committees and entities funded by both chambers), and Office of Congressional Workplace Rights — are comparatively small. In addition, the differences in House and Senate funding levels are comparatively minor. Their funding rates likely mostly mirror inflation.
Committees and Member Offices
Congressional committees and member offices are significantly underfunded. Over the decades, resources have been shifted to leadership offices or simply evaporated. The House and Senate took divergent approaches to addressing these shortfalls.
The House of Representatives provided no aggregate change in funding to House Member offices and a paltry 2% increase in overall funding for House committees. With inflation, this amounts to a cut in funding for both. I don’t think this was the original plan, however.
House Member offices requested $910 million for this year, only to receive $850 million. House Committees requested $236 million, only to receive $211 million. As the people requesting and deciding on the funding levels are the same individuals, what’s going on?
My guess is that the House had planned to be more reasonable with funding levels. House leadership intended to increase funding for House Member offices by 7%, or $60 million. They had planned to increase funding for House Committees by 13%, or $22 million. This is in line with longstanding efforts to undo the drastic funding cuts undertaken by the House in previous years. We could speculate why they reversed course, but will leave that as an exercise for the reader.
The Senate provided a 6% increase in funding for Senate Member offices. This number is driven in part by a formula that increases funding for Senate offices based on population. The premise is that as casework demands increase, Senate offices should have staff able to assist.3
The Senate provided a significant 18% increase in funding for its committees. This number is artificially large because of the Continuing Resolution enacted for FY 2025, which did not enact into law funding levels that the Senate had authorized for its committees.4
Policy Decisions
The Appropriations bills make policy determinations, not just appropriate funds.
For example, the House included section 121 to disable GAO’s ability to bring a civil action concerning the administration’s unlawful use of impoundment.
Section 212 appears intended to protect people who discriminate against individuals who are gay and married.
The House did adopt a section 215, a bipartisan provision allowing members to hire DACA recipients as staff, but Speaker Johnson has vowed to strip it out via the Rules Committee.
The Senate Appropriations bill did not contain the House’s provisions that disables Congress’s power of the purpose or dabbles in culture war fights.
Section 212 in the Senate bill would apply the PUMP Act to the Legislative branch, a provision the House rejected 28-33 when it was offered as an amendment by Rep. Underwood. The provision would require employers to provide reasonable break time and private space for nursing employees to express break milk. (The roll call vote is online.)
Defending the Legislative Branch
In her opening remarks, Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chair Patty Murray raised the issue of Legislative branch independence. She expressed her views that the Library of Congress, Government Accountability Office, and Government Publishing Office are Legislative branch agencies, but the appointment process of the heads of those agencies currently, and inappropriately, implicates the Executive branch. She argued it is time to modernize that appointment process, just as Congress has recently updated the process by which the Architect of the Capitol is appointed, moving it into Congressional hands.
Vice Chair Murray indicated that Senate leadership and the authorizing committees are working on the appointments issue — and that Senate appropriators should not remain silent. She indicated she would not offer her amendment to address the appointment process in exchange for an agreement to work together with Sen. Collins on these issues. (You can see her remarks at 2:18:14).
Report Language
In addition to enacting statutory language, the House and Senate push policy changes through report language. That language, while not binding, is highly persuasive on agencies and offices, especially inside the Legislative branch.
We identified 89 provisions in the House and Senate reports that require future actions by Legislative branch stakeholders. We’ve published a spreadsheet of those provisions.5 We won’t go over them all, but here are a few Senate items we found notable:
The Senate provided emergency funds and direction to the Capitol Police and Sergeant at Arms to address physical and cybersecurity of members and staff in DC and around the country.
The Capitol Police received a tongue-lashing for apparently not providing enough time for its Board to review and approve the USCP’s annual budget request.
The Architect of the Capitol was chided for “extended timelines and increased costs” related to critical initiatives related to security and continuity efforts.
The Senate provided support and direction to the Sergeant at Arms on co-developing technology with the House, including developing a MOU between the chambers.
The Library of Congress was directed to make publicly available a report on its annual public forum concerning Congress.gov and was authorized to discuss its recommendations with the public.
The Library was directed to update Congress within 45 days of the issuance of the report on options for providing appropriations data for public access.
The Library was directed to improve its outreach to Congress concerning the tools, capabilities, and resources it makes available to Congress.
GAO’s STAA was directed to develop a report on the use of artificial intelligence across the legislative branch, including best practices.
The GAO was reminded to complete its study on Executive branch agencies responsiveness to constituents seeking assistance.
The budget for “maintenance, care, and operations” of the Capitol Building will nearly double.
Next Steps
We were involved in urging Senate appropriators to forgo the funding cuts and policy limitations the House aimed at GAO and the Library and are very pleased that Sens. Mullin, Heinrich, Collins, and Murray charted a more institutionalist course. We hope the House will come into alignment with that position. We hope both chambers will work to reform the appointments process for the GPO, GAO, and the Library.
Appropriations is very much about the art of the possible. Difficult political dynamics have at times caused the House or Senate to undermine their institutional capacities. We are in such a moment now. The appropriations process itself is in doubt. For the sake of our democracy, let us hope appropriators can find a way forward.
Please note that Senate does not weigh in on funding levels for the House and vice versa. The above chart does not show items jointly funded by the House and Senate.
House and Senate entities are funding units that exist solely inside the House or Senate. For example, a House entity might be the Sergeant at Arms, or the Clerk, funding for committees, funding for leadership offices, and so on.
The House would benefit from adopting a version of the Senate’s approach.
The House and Senate both allocate funds for their committees at the start of each Congress. The funding level is decided for the upcoming two years. But, the appropriations cycle only lasts a year. Normally, committee funding levels would be split across two appropriations cycles. But because last year’s funding was artificially low, this year’s must be higher to compensate.
Full disclosure: we made 66 recommendations to appropriators of items we would like to see included, and we were gratified to see some of our top asks reflected in the bill text and report language from both chambers.
Superb work, Daniel and Chris!