Conclusion of the FY26 Appropriations Process Kicks Off the FY27 Process in Election-Shorted Year

At a Glance

• Organizations interested in engaging in the annual appropriations process should be considering their priorities for the first stages of congressional engagement.
• Early engagement with congressional champions is important to ensure requestors do not miss vital deadlines or information requirements.
• For organizations looking to submit requests, it is important to make sure they are well thought out and have justification and support from other offices or organizations that speak to the House or Senate member’s office that you are soliciting.

As the US Congress works to complete its Fiscal Year 2026 appropriations process, Appropriations Committee staffers and personal office staffers in both the House and Senate will have an eye on the Fiscal Year 2027 process, which is about to get underway. Organizations interested in engaging in the annual appropriations process should be considering their priorities for the first stages of congressional engagement, particularly given the expectedly shorter congressional calendar due to the upcoming midterm elections.

Overview of the Appropriations Process

Typically, presidents release their budget and policy priorities in early February, which helps set the stage in terms of top funding levels and priorities for the various executive branch agencies. While the president’s budget helps initiate the process, it is Congress that ultimately determines funding levels. 

As part of the appropriations process, Congress will generally work to pass a budget resolution that establishes a blueprint for House and Senate appropriators to work through the individual appropriations bills. This doesn’t always happen, particularly when control of Congress is divided between the parties. In 2025, congressional Republicans used a budget resolution to drive forward the “One Big, Beautiful” reconciliation bill. While some in the House majority would like to see an OBB reconciliation 2.0 bill emerge this year, there currently is not agreement on that.

When done, a budget resolution should help facilitate the appropriations process by providing funding levels to inform the drafting of individual spending bills. Absent this guidance, the process is more challenging. The 12 bills are the same in the House and the Senate and together fund all discretionary federal agency programs. The 12 bills by subcommittee nickname are: Ag/FDA, CJS, Defense, Energy & Water, Financial Services, Homeland Security, Interior & Environment, Labor-HHS, Leg Branch, MilCon-VA, SFOPS, and T-HUD. 

As those big-picture items are being addressed, the offices of individual members of Congress will also begin opening individual portals in their offices soliciting requests for funding priorities. These include requests for programmatic funding — for ongoing programs authorized by the federal government — and report language, as well as congressionally directed spending (CDS) requests, also known as community projects or earmarks. Report language accompanies appropriations bills and helps instructs agencies on congressional intent for their spending. 

For CDS, the House and Senate have different rules for how requests will be considered; therefore it’s important to consider how those rules impact potential requests. Similarly, individual offices have different procedures and timing to consider such requests; and early engagement with congressional champions is important to ensure requestors do not miss vital deadlines or information requirements. 

Once an individual office has received and vetted those appropriations requests, they will transmit them to the respective appropriations subcommittee charged with producing the first draft of their individual bill. Those bills are then marked up by their respective subcommittees, where amendments can be considered. Once approved at the subcommittee level, a full committee markup is held, which gives another opportunity to amend or otherwise affect a bill. Once approved by the Appropriations Committee, bills are moved to the House or Senate floor for broad adoption. Markups typically begin in late spring and conclude before August recess. Thus, non-appropriator member submission deadlines are usually early to late spring in advance of the markups.

It is important to note that as the process moves along, it becomes harder to influence these appropriations bills as they continue to gain consensus. For organizations looking to submit requests, it is important to make sure they are well thought out and have justification and support from other offices or organizations that speak to the member’s office that you are soliciting.

For More Information

For further information, you may contact the authors.