Last week’s announcement that OMB would be releasing all of the remaining FY25 appropriated funds to AmeriCorps was an important win — but our work is far from over. This week, the House Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee marked up its FY26 funding bill, proposing to cut AmeriCorps funding in half.
With over 7,000 media hits and more than 113,000 messages sent to Capitol Hill since April, our collective voices have made a real difference. Now, we need to keep the pressure on to protect AmeriCorps funding for FY26.
We’ve updated our Contact Congress message to focus solely on the FY26 appropriations fight. If you haven’t sent a message to Congress in a while – please take a moment to send a new email — and then share the link widely with your networks. Together, we can ensure AmeriCorps continues to serve communities across the country.
Legislative Update
On Tuesday, the House Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee met to mark up their FY26 spending bill. Below is a chart summarizing what we know. In short – the bill includes $642.95 million for the AmeriCorps agency, a cut of $619 million or 49% below FY25.
While the bill includes level funding for RSVP ($55.1 million) and the Volunteer Generation Fund ($8.6 million), the bill slashes the stipended AmeriCorps grants programs. Funding for AmeriCorps State and National, NCCC, VISTA, and State Commission Administration Grants is basically cut in half.
The House bill also cuts the National Service Trust by more than 75%, providing just $40 million for AmeriCorps education awards, and cuts funding for the agency’s salaries and expenses by $30 million, which undermines the agency’s efforts to modernize grant and member management systems and implement new internal financial controls.
We can tell quite a bit about the Committee’s recommendations with the info in hand, but we need the Committee Report – typically posted online following Full Committee markup – to fill in all the blanks. For example – we can tell that the bill includes $91 million to be divided between the Foster Grandparent and Senior Companions Programs. We assume both programs have likely been cut by 50%, like the other grant programs, but we cannot confirm this detail. We also cannot confirm funding levels for Days of Service and evaluation – until the report is made publicly available.
The Republican summary of the bill, released in advance of the markup, indicates that the House Committee is recommending that AmeriCorps be renamed the America First Corps “to reflect the agency’s core mission of funding organizations that place Americans at the center of service initiatives.” It also states that that America250 activities and projects should be prioritized through the National Days of Service program.
You can read more in the bill text shared online, along with Republican and Democratic bill summaries and Republican and Democratic press releases. Voices for National Service also released a statement, which you can read here.
The full House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to markup the Labor-HHS bill on Tuesday, September 9 at 11:00AM. You can watch the webcast using this link.
While under normal order – these funding bills would be considered by both chambers and go to a conference committee to reconcile the differences before the start of the fiscal year on October 1 – Congress is running out of time. The House and Senate have been writing spending bills at two very different funding levels (as you will recall, the Senate Labor-HHS bill – approved by Committee in late July – includes near level funding for AmeriCorps) and many lawmakers are infuriated that the Trump Administration continues to withhold billions of dollars in previously approved spending, leading to skepticism about negotiating a funding deal.
While we are bracing ourselves for a series of continuing resolutions, we will be watching to see what short – or long-term deal – can be struck to avert a government shutdown on October 1st.
