Before adjourning for the August recess, the Senate Appropriations Committee (SAC) marked up and approved its FY 2026 Defense and Labor-Health and Human Services (Labor-HHS) appropriations bills.
The Labor-HHS bill provides $116.6 billion for the Department of HHS, a $446 million increase compared to FY 2025. Notably, the bill rejects the Trump administration’s proposal to restructure HHS and includes language throughout directing agencies to maintain sufficient staffing to support their responsibilities, pushing back on the administration’s broad layoffs of federal workers.
Funding highlights in the Labor-HHS bill include:
- $47.2 billion for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an increase of $400 million from FY 2025 levels
- This includes $7.34 billion, a $150 million increase, for the National Cancer Institute, and $106.4 million, a $30 million increase, for the Office of Research on Women’s Health.
- The bill text includes language preventing the administration from cutting NIH’s facilities and administrative costs. Additionally, the committee adopted an amendment that would prohibit the use of funds from this bill to be used to increase the proportion of multi-year NIH grants.
- $9.15 billion for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
- This includes $1.4 billion for the Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion programs, representing a $5 million decrease in funding. The CDC’s Ovarian Cancer Control Initiative, Johanna’s Law, and the Breast and Cervical Cancer programs received level funding.
Additionally, SGO secured the following report language on HPV screenings for cervical cancer in the report that accompanies the FY 2026 Labor-HHS appropriations bill. This language was part of SGO’s FY 2025 appropriations requests; however, with Congress passing a continuing resolution (CR), there was no final report in which it could be included.
HPV Screenings for Cervical Cancer.—The Committee recognizes that self-collection has the potential to reach individuals who are never screened or under screened for HPV, which makes up about half of women who are diagnosed with cervical cancer in the United States. The Committee urges CMS to examine ways to ensure that there is appropriate coverage for this screening methodology upon FDA approval.
The SAC-approved Defense appropriations bill provided a funding increase for the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP); however, funding was not restored to the FY 2024 levels of $1.5 million. Specifically, the bill includes $15 million for the Ovarian Cancer Research Program, representing level funding from FY 2025, but a $30 million decrease from FY 2024. While the bill did not create a separate line item for endometrial cancer research, the bill includes level funding of $130 million for the Peer Reviewed Cancer Research Program (PRCRP). The funds provided for the PRCRP are directed to be used to conduct research in multiple areas, including endometrial cancer.
For more details on funding and report language, we encourage SGO members to check out our FY 2026 appropriations tracker here.
Moving forward, we won’t have details on the House’s Labor-HHS funding levels until after the August recess, as the Committee canceled its July markup and has yet to announce a new date. However, we expect that the Senate’s funding levels will be higher than those proposed by the House. With only four weeks after the August recess to strike a deal on funding, lawmakers are already anticipating the need for a CR to avert a government shutdown on October 1. In the meantime, we urge SGO members to take action now by contacting their members of Congress on these important funding issues.