On September 10, 2025, by a vote of 34 to 28, the House Appropriations Committee approved its version of the Fiscal Year 2026 Commerce, Justice, Science (CJS) Appropriations bill, which funds the U.S. Census Bureau.
During the lengthy markup session, members considered several amendments, none of which impacted the Census Bureau’s funding level nor its programs and surveys.
Overall, the House CJS appropriations bill provides a total discretionary allocation of $76.824 billion, which represents a 2.8 percent decrease compared to the fiscal year 2025 enacted level.
As The Census Project summarized in a recent blog, the bill would allocate $1.6765 billion for the Census Bureau in Fiscal Year 2026, which is $294 million above the agency’s FY25 enacted level and the same as President Trump’s proposed budget. It would provide $288.5 million for Current Surveys and Programs ($40 million below the FY25 enacted level) and $1.388 billion for Periodic Censuses and Programs ($334 million above the FY25 enacted level). The House proposed level is also $156 million more than the Senate Appropriations Committee’s recommended funding level in their version of the FY 2026 CJS bill.
In addition, the House CJS appropriations bill includes a pair of legislative provisions similar to language in the House FY 2025 CJS bill:
- “SEC. 556. None of the funds made available by this or any other Act may be used to allow the United States Census Bureau to include aliens who are unlawfully present in the United States in rendering apportionment determinations in subsequent decennial censuses.”
- “SEC. 605. None of the funds in this Act may be used to enforce involuntary compliance, or to inquire more than twice for voluntary compliance with any survey conducted by the Bureau of the Census.”
Prior to the committee’s consideration of the bill, The Census Project Co-Directors sent all committee members a letter, expressing concerns about how Section 605 could negatively affect the Census Bureau’s non-response follow up operations overall. In addition, a dozen business groups, led by the Insights Association, communicated similar concerns about Section 605. This was ironic given that BLS just revised the unemployment numbers for a whole year in a routine process due to non-response issues with that survey.
As of September 11, the outlook for the House CJS appropriations bill was unclear. Committee sources were not aware of immediate plans to bring the CJS bill to the floor for consideration by the full House of Representatives.
Additional information about the bill is available in press releases issued by the Committee’s leadership: Majority press release and Minority press release.
