House Passes Final FY2026 Funding Bill For NASA, Senate is Next
Today the House passed three more final FY2026 appropriations bills — a minibus — that represent a compromise between the House and Senate over funding for Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS), Energy-Water, and Interior-Environment. The CJS bill funds NASA and rejects the deep cuts proposed by the Trump Administration. Instead of reducing NASA’s funding to $18.8 billion, it keeps the agency at roughly the same level as FY2025 — $24.4 billion. NASA also received funding in the reconciliation bill.
The House and Senate released the minibus on Monday. Republican opposition to provisions in the CJS bill that are unrelated to NASA (primarily about certain Democratic earmarks) led the House Rules Committee to craft a Rule that allowed the CJS portion to be separated from the other two.
The House agreed to the Rule yesterday on a strictly partisan vote of 214-212. During consideration of the bill itself today, however, only 47 Republicans voted to separate CJS so the bill remains intact.
The final vote on the bill (H.R. 6938) was a strongly bipartisan 397-28, with six not voting.
The bill now goes to the Senate. If it passes and is signed into law, six of the 12 FY2026 appropriations will be enacted. The other six, including Defense, are still awaiting consideration. The Continuing Resolution (CR) keeping those departments and agencies funded expires on January 30.
The Trump Administration request proposed deep cuts to NASA’s science, space technology, aeronautics and space operations accounts. Only the Moon-to-Mars human spaceflight account (“Exploration”) was spared.
The final CJS bill instead provides $24.4 billion for NASA as follows:
The reconciliation bill — the One, Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) — signed into law on July 4 also included $10 billion for NASA spread over several years. The FY2026 portion is approximately $3 billion, mostly for the Artemis program to return astronauts to the lunar surface, plus a small amount ($250 million) for the International Space Station.
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