House Appropriators Vote Out Education Spending Bill With Deep Cuts

For immediate release

Early Wednesday morning, the House Appropriations Committee approved, on a party-line vote, the House’s version of the FY27 Labor HHS Education spending bill, which proposes to cut 10% of the Department of Education’s funding and eliminate key language education programs. Specifically, the bill would eliminate all funding for the $2.19 billion Title II-A (educator professional development) program, the $890 million Title III (English Language Acquisition) program, and the $81 million HEA Title VI-Fulbright Hays (international education and language studies) program. Title I, Part A, the largest K-12 education program, would receive a $1.9 billion cut under the same bill, and both Title I migrant education programs would be zeroed out. This bill is now ready for House floor action, which could come at any time before Congress’s August recess. The Senate has not yet released its version of this bill nor scheduled a markup for it.

During last night’s debate, Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) introduced an amendment that would have restored all of Title III’s funding. In her remarks in committee, Rep. Torres described her community’s and family’s multilingualism and argued that Title III and the Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) advance the Administration’s stated goals, as expressed through its English-Only Executive Order, that all Americans learn to speak English. Escobart stated that: “We can’t have it both ways. We can’t say we expect English to be the official language of this country, and we are going to cut all of the funding that gets us there.” She also noted that because Texas is cutting education funding, her school districts will not be “able to pick up the tab” from this proposed cut. House Subcommittee Chairman Robert Aderholt (R-AL) argued against adding Title III’s $890 million back into the bill on the grounds that state and local governments are best equipped to handle this issue and that the federal government is unable to fully fund its commitment to special needs students. Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) supported the amendment and described her father’s difficulty as a non-English speaking immigrant to the United States’ public school system in the early 20th Century. The amendment failed on a voice vote.

It is worth noting that the House bill, though it makes deep cuts to important programs, ignores the Administration’s proposal to combine multiple K-12 programs into a single block grant. Additionally, this bill does contain a few bright spots for language education advocates, including providing slight increases for Title IVA (flexible block grant), and Indian Education, and level funding the Alaska Native Education and Native Hawaiian education programs.

While this bill has moved quickly in the House, the Senate now appears to be at an impasse over advancing any of the twelve FY27 appropriations bills. Senate leaders have not yet reached an agreement on overall spending levels, which will determine the budget shares of defense and non-defense discretionary spending (including education). The Administration’s budget proposal to spend $1.5 trillion on defense is the most significant hang-up, as the sheer size of that request makes it difficult to fund domestic spending priorities. 

Within the Labor HHS Education spending bill, another obstacle is the expected $15 billion shortfall in federal Pell Grant funding. This large number must be addressed in some way, possibly through cuts to other programs in this bill.

With all of these uncertainties surrounding funding and the looming midterm elections, it is anticipated that Congress will again be unable to finish the appropriations process by September 30th, the start of the federal fiscal year. As a result, it will need to pass one or several Continuing Resolutions to keep the federal government operating. A final decision on education spending will likely not occur until after the elections.

Below is a chart of how key education programs are faring in the FY27 appropriations process:

Program Name	FY26 Final Approps	FY27 Presidential Budget	FY27 House Approps
DOD
WLARA	$15M	0	Not available yet
STATE
Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs	$667 M	$216 M	$647 M
USDE
Title I	$19.128 B	$20.426 B	$16.791 B
IDEA, Part B	$14.234 B	$15.401 B	$14.269 B
Impact Aid	$1.630 B	$1.630 B	$1.635 B
Title II-A (PD)	$2.190 B	$0*	$0
Title IV-A (SSAE Block Grants)	$1.380 B	$0*	$1.385 B
Charter Schools	$440 M	$500 M	$500 M
CTE State Grants	$1.439 B	$1.439 B	$1.449 B
IES	$790 M	$261 M	$494 M
Title III – English Language	$890 M	$0	$0
Teacher Quality Partnership Program	$70M	$0	$0
Title VI of HEA	$80.664 M	$0	$0
Indian Education	$197 M	$197 M	$201 M
NALRC (in Indian Ed National Activities)	$3 M	$0	$4 M
Native Hawaiian Ed	$46 M	$0	$46 M
Alaska Native Ed	$45 M	$0*	$45 M

*Included in Administration’s proposed K-12 block grant.