Congress Passes Appropriations Package to Sustain Funding for NASA, NOAA Fisheries, Army Corps Civil Works, and EPA
This week, Congress rejected the the destructive Fiscal Year 2026 (FY26) budget cuts sought by the Trump Administration by passing a package of bipartisan appropriations bills, referred to as a “minibus,.” This funding package covers agenies that are funded by the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (CJS) appropriations bill, the Energy and Water Development (EWD) appropriations bill, and the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies (IE) appropriations bill.
IFPTE members weighed in on these funding measures throughout 2025 and told Congress that the massive cuts in the FY25 President’s Budge Request for NASA, NOAA, EPA, and Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) would destroy government services and functions that underpin America’s scientific leadership and innovation, food security, commerce and economic security, environmental protection and public health, and national security.
In a letter to the Senate this week, IFPTE highlights some of the key provisions in the minibus that the union supports:
“The bill cuts NASA’s FY26 spending level by 1.6% and NASA Science by 1.1% over the previous year, but avoids the Administration’s request to defund the agency budget by 24.4% and dismantle the NASA Science budget through a 47% reduction.”
Language in the joint explanatory statement accompanying the bill directs NASA to “fund key projects, ‘preserve all the technical and scientific world-class capabilities at Goddard Space Flight Center’, and ‘ensure that Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) employees can continue work with minimal disruption’ as they advance NASA’s world-leading Earth System Modeling efforts.”
The bill increases “funding for NOAA Fisheries surveys, allocating resources to the Seafood Import Monitoring Program, supporting the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund, and other NOAA priority programs.”
“[P]rovides the USACE with $1.75 billion above FY25 spending levels and “provides the USACE Operation and Maintenance program with $6 billion, which is an 8.1% increase over FY25 spending levels.”
“[P]rovides $8.8 billion for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which is 3.6% below FY25 spending levels, but avoids steep cuts sought by the Administration that would have harmed environmental safety and public health, as well as economic competitiveness and innovation.”
IFPTE’s letter also noted that, while IFPTE applauds that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are rejecting the Trump Administration and the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) budget request, “the flat funding levels over the last two fiscal years, combined with the decrease in funding for several agencies in this minibus, must be corrected in upcoming appropriations cycles. Many agencies have seen critical programs and missions starved of resources over the last several years and, in recent months, have experienced a massive loss of institutional knowledge and technical expertise, chaotic mismanagement and the destruction of productive labor-management relations, terminations of qualified probationary employees, the resulting demoralized workforce, and the Administration’s effort to push dedicated civil servants to leave the federal workforce.”
Read IFPTE’s letter to the Senate supporting the passage of the CJS-EWD-IE minibus here.