On January 5, the leaders of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees announced agreement on a funding package, or “minibus”, combining three Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 appropriations bills. One of the bills is the Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) Appropriations bill, which funds the U.S. Census Bureau.
The package includes $1.5 billion for the Census Bureau, a slight increase over the Bureau’s FY 2025 funding level of $1.38 billion (which was the same as in FY 2024). The funding level is lower than the amount ($1.6765 billion) that the House Appropriations Committee recommended and census stakeholders supported. However, census stakeholders were pleased to see that the final agreement excluded a provision that the House Appropriations Committee had proposed in their version of the FY 2026 CJS appropriations bill. Section 605 of that bill would have limited the Census Bureau to no more than two follow-up inquiries across all of its surveys. If enacted, this language would have decimated response rates for all of the Bureau’s surveys and been especially consequential for the American Community Survey and decennial census.
In addition to excluding Section 605, the bill rejects other policy riders, including Section 556 of the original House bill that would have excluded persons who are unlawfully in the United States from the apportionment base. Further, the bill approves report language accompanying the Senate’s version of the FY 2026 CJS appropriations bill, which, among other things, addressed the American Community Survey, 2026 Census Test, and the elimination of the Bureau’s advisory committees.
The U.S. House of Representatives is likely to consider the minibus package later in the week. If it passes, it moves onto the U.S. Senate for consideration where its outlook is unclear. If the bill passes and is sent to the President for signature into law, the Census Bureau will ultimately receive an approximately $110 million boost in FY 2026.
