House Appropriations Subpanel Advances FY26 Bill to Keep FCC Funding Static
The House Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee voted 9-6 along party lines Monday night to advance its FY 2026 budget bill, which proposes to maintain the FCC’s annual funding at $390.2 million (see 2507210064). The measure includes a set of riders that would bar the agency from using money to enforce certain policies that originated during the Biden administration and have been in Republicans’ crosshairs, including its 2024 digital discrimination order. House Appropriations previously included some of the riders in its FY 2025 funding bill, which didn’t get a floor vote (see 2406050067). House and Senate Republicans also bowed Congressional Review Act resolutions of disapproval last year that aimed to roll back the 2024 order (see 2403140070).
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House Appropriations Financial Services Chairman Dave Joyce, R-Ohio, didn’t specifically mention the FCC riders but noted that the subpanel’s bill includes provisions to halt Democrats’ “social policies.” The bill would ban the FCC from establishing “an advisory committee with respect to any environmental, social or governance matter.” FCC Chairman Brendan Carr in January scrapped the Communications Equity and Diversity Council and the Digital Discrimination Task Force in response to President Donald Trump's executive order (see 2501210070).
Financial Services ranking member Steny Hoyer, D-Md., argued that Congress “should not and must not sit idle as [Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency advisory group] chain-saws through the federal government and as Trump politicizes and weaponizes agencies under this subcommittee's jurisdiction, including the FCC.”
Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., criticized the measure for cutting the FTC’s annual funding, which she said would lead to increased “scam peddling, price gouging and market” manipulation. The measure would give the FTC $388.6 million for FY26. That’s a decrease of more than 8% from what the agency got for FY 2024 and FY 2025 (see 2403250015), but 1% more than the Trump administration sought.