WASHINGTON — Leaders from several agencies within the Department of Homeland Security testified before a U.S. House panel Wednesday about how a shutdown would affect the programs they oversee, though Democrats argued the hearing was a “show” that wasn’t going to get lawmakers any closer to agreement on constraints to federal immigration enforcement. 

Congress has until Friday at midnight to pass a stopgap spending bill or reach bipartisan agreement on the department’s full-year funding bill, which was held up by Democrats after the killing of two U.S. citizens by immigration agents in Minneapolis. Otherwise, the department will begin a shutdown. 

House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said it was unacceptable that neither Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem nor any leaders from Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Protection were at the hearing. 

“Democrats requested that they be present. Why are they not here?” DeLauro said. “That should tell you everything you need to know about what this hearing is really all about. It is not to address the real concerns of millions of Americans over the unchecked brutality of officers within those agencies, brutality that has left two Americans dead and countless others seriously injured.”

DeLauro countered that Republicans held the hearing to imply Democrats don’t care about consistent funding for the many agencies within DHS, including the Coast Guard, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Secret Service and Transportation Security Administration.

“In fact, it is the Republican leadership that has chosen to hold your agencies hostage to avoid implementing reforms that they know are necessary to keep our community safe from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Customs and Border Patrol,” DeLauro said. 

Nevada Republican Rep. Mark Amodei, chairman of the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, said he opted not to invite Noem because he wanted to “talk to the operational people” and that he decided not to invite leaders of ICE and CBP since they testified in front of a separate House committee Tuesday.  

Amodei said enacting a DHS funding bill before the Friday midnight deadline seemed “like a very tall order.” 

“A shutdown has gone from a distinct possibility to a probability,” Amodei said. “But not all components will equally share the pain during a Homeland shutdown.”

Amodei said that ICE and CBP’s “missions will be largely unaffected by a shutdown,” in part, because Republicans provided the two agencies with more than $150 billion in the party’s “big, beautiful” law. 

Most Homeland Security workers will stay on duty

A government shutdown this time around, unlike the one last year, would only affect the Department of Homeland Security, since Congress has approved the other 11 annual government funding bills. 

The other agencies housed within DHS would sustain varying ramifications. In general, any employees who focus on national security issues or the protection of life and property would continue to work through a shutdown, while federal workers who don’t are supposed to be furloughed. 

Neither category of employees will receive their paychecks during the funding lapse, though federal law requires they receive back pay once Congress approves some sort of spending bill. 

Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, said the “reality is that nearly 90% of the department will continue operating, even if Congress fails to complete its work by the end of the week.”

Leaders urged to give up recess next week

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., urged GOP leaders to cancel the recess scheduled for next week, when many lawmakers plan to travel to Germany for the Munich Security Conference.

Cole argued that members should stay on Capitol Hill to negotiate an agreement on Homeland Security funding if a deal isn’t reached before the deadline. 

“I will tell you personally, I think it’s unconscionable if Congress leaves and does not solve the problem,” Cole said. “I’m sure Munich is a great place. I’ve been there many times. The beer is outstanding. But we don’t need to go to a defense conference someplace in Europe when we’re not taking care of the defense of the United States of America.”

Cole said he “would be embarrassed to walk past a TSA agent that wasn’t getting paid so I could go someplace else. And that’s my personal opinion.

“That’s not necessarily the opinion of my leadership or anybody else, but we should stay here and get this resolved. We should make sure that men and women that we have already put in a terrible position once for 43 days don’t have to go through it again.”

Missing paychecks for the Coast Guard

Admiral Thomas Allan, vice commandant for the U.S. Coast Guard, told lawmakers “a funding lapse has severe and lasting challenges for our workforce, operational readiness and long-term capabilities.”

“A lapse lasting more than a few days will halt pay for the Coast Guard’s 56,000 active duty, reserve and civilian personnel,” Allan said. “This is not a distant administrative issue. The uncertainty of missing paychecks negatively impacts readiness and creates a significant financial hardship for service members and their families.”

Shutdowns, he said, “cripple morale and directly harm our ability to recruit and retain the talented Americans we need to meet growing demands.”

Ha Nguyen McNeill, acting administrator at the Transportation Security Administration, said during the 43-day government shutdown that ended in November, she heard stories about “officers sleeping in their cars at airports to save money on gas, selling their blood and plasma and taking on second jobs to make ends meet.” 

“Many were subject to late fees from missed bill payments, eviction notices, loss of child care and more. All the while, expected to serve their country and perform at the highest level when in uniform,” McNeill said. “Twelve weeks later, some are just recovering from the financial impact.”

McNeill testified that “TSA’s critical national security mission does not stop during a shutdown; around 95% or 61,000 of TSA’s employees are deemed essential and continue to work to protect the traveling public during a shutdown, while not getting paid.”

Matthew Quinn, deputy director at the United States Secret Service, said agents will continue to report to work though he emphasized a shutdown would still have consequences. 

“To the casual observer, there will be no visible difference,” Quinn said. “However, gaps in funding have a profound impact on our agency today and into the future.” 

Gregg Phillips, associate administrator in the Office of Response and Recovery at FEMA, said a shutdown “would severely disrupt FEMA’s ability to reimburse states for disaster relief costs and to support our recovery from disasters.”

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during a policy announcement event at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Jan. 8, 2026 in Washington, DC.  (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Congress has approved the first public health funding bill since President Donald Trump began his second term, with lawmakers largely rejecting his proposed spending cuts and the elimination of dozens of programs. 

A bipartisan group of negotiators instead struck a deal to increase funding on several line items within the Department of Health and Human Services’ annual appropriations bill, including for major initiatives at the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

“When you look at the differences between what was proposed and what was agreed to, it is astonishing,” House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said during a hearing on the bill in late January.

The Trump administration’s budget request, released in May, called on Congress to cut funding for the Department of Health and Human Services by $33 billion, or 26.2%.

The president asked lawmakers to implement an $18 billion funding cut to the NIH, which he argued would bring the agency in line with the Make America Healthy Again agenda. 

The Trump administration proposed a $3.6 billion cut for CDC programs, including the elimination of the National Center for Chronic Diseases Prevention and Health Promotion, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, and Public Health Preparedness and Response, all of which it said could “be conducted more effectively by States.”

The budget request said more than $1 billion should be cut from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, though it said the administration was “committed to combatting the scourge of deadly drugs that have ravaged American communities.”

Trump also requested lawmakers zero out any funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, which he deemed “unnecessary.” The federal program helps millions of low-income households meet their home energy needs, via states and tribes.

The final spending bill Congress approved rejected nearly all of the major cuts. 

Collins, Murray both praise final product

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, said the bills “reflect months of hard work and deliberation and contributions from members of both parties and on both sides of the Capitol.”

“Funding for NIH is not decreased, as was proposed in the administration’s budget,” she said. “Rather, it is increased by $415 million, including increases of $100 million for Alzheimer’s research and $10 million more for diabetes research, with a focus on type 1 diabetes.” 

Collins also touted an increase in “funding for low-income heating assistance, which is absolutely crucial for states like Maine and is an issue that I have worked for years on with my Democratic colleague Jack Reed of Rhode Island.”

Senate Appropriations Committee ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., said the difference between Trump’s budget request and the final bills was like the difference between “night and day.”

“Our bill rejects President Trump’s asks to rubber stamp his public health sabotage,” she said. “Instead, it doubles down on lifesaving public health investments. It rejects Trump’s efforts to slash opioid response funds. It rejects his proposal to chop the CDC in half. It rejects his call to end programs like title X, the teen pregnancy program, essential HIV initiatives, and more.” 

Rare bipartisan agreement in Trump’s second term

Senators from both political parties indicated last summer they weren’t fully on board with Trump’s budget proposal and used a hearing with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in May and a separate hearing with NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya in June to highlight their concerns. 

The Senate Appropriations Committee approved its HHS spending bill on a broadly bipartisan vote in July, while the House Appropriations Committee approved its funding bill in September without any Democratic support.

Neither of the original bills went to the floor for debate and amendment votes, though negotiations to find compromise on a final bill began late last year after the record-breaking government shutdown ended in November. 

Republicans and Democrats brokered a final agreement on the HHS funding bill in late January, the first time bipartisan agreement was reached during Trump’s second term. 

Congress previously approved a series of stopgap spending bills to keep HHS up and running, mostly on funding levels and policies last set during the Biden administration. 

The House originally voted on Jan. 22 to send the package that included funding for HHS to the Senate. But it stalled after federal immigration agents shot and killed a second U.S. citizen in Minnesota and Democrats demanded changes to the spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security. 

The Senate voted 71-29 on Jan. 30 to send the package back to the House after removing the full-year DHS spending bill and replacing it with a two-week stopgap. The House then voted 217-214 on Tuesday to clear the package for Trump, who signed it later in the day, ending a four-day partial government shutdown.  

The package also holds funding for the departments of Defense, Education, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, State, Transportation and Treasury. 

‘Months of hard work turned into results’

House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., said during floor debate last month the process that led to the final bills proved lawmakers “can make tough decisions.”

“This is where months of hard work turned into results,” Cole said. “You see, we aren’t here for just another stopgap temporary fix. We’re here to finish the job by providing full-year funding and specifically this package addresses core areas of national consequence — defense; labor, health and education; and transportation and housing development.”

Congress is supposed to pass the dozen full-year appropriations bills by the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1, though it hasn’t completed all of its work on time in decades. 

Last fiscal year, it didn’t complete its work at all, making March 2024 the last time Congress approved all of the funding bills. 

Cole said during debate the programs funded “aren’t abstract concepts on a page, they affect how Americans live, work, learn and travel every day.”

DeLauro said the package of bills represents “a strong bipartisan, bicameral agreement that rejects the Trump administration’s efforts to eviscerate public services and reasserts Congress’ power of the purse.”

“It provides funding levels, removing ambiguity that the White House sought to exploit in the past,” DeLauro said. “It establishes deadlines for required spending, provides minimum staffing thresholds to prevent agencies from being hollowed out and increases notification requirements to ensure the administration is complying with the laws that Congress makes.” 

HHS ends up with $210 million bump

The bill provides HHS with more than $116 billion, $210 million more in discretionary funding than the previous level and a rejection of Trump’s request to cut $33 billion, according to a summary from Murray’s office. 

NIH will receive $48.7 billion in funding, $415 million more than its current spending level, showing that lawmakers were unwilling to slice its budget by $18 billion as requested. 

Congress bolstered funding for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration by $65 million to a total of $7.4 billion, according to Murray’s summary. Trump asked lawmakers to reduce its allocation by more than $1 billion. 

A $3.6 billion funding cut for the CDC was also rejected, with appropriators agreeing to provide the Atlanta-based agency with $9.2 billion.

A summary of the bill from DeLauro’s office says negotiators were able to keep funding for domestic and global HIV/AIDS activities, Firearm Injury and Mortality Prevention Research and Tobacco Prevention and Control, among other programs that House Republicans originally proposed to zero out. 

The legislation bolstered, instead of eliminated, funding for the Low Income Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, according to a summary from Cole’s office. 

The bill, it said, “reprioritizes taxpayer dollars where they matter most: into lifesaving biomedical research and resilient medical supply chains, classrooms and technical programs that set Americans up for success, and rural hospitals and primary health care to support strong and healthy families.”

CDC program axed

The legislation does eliminate the CDC’s Social Determinants of Health program, which the agency’s website states are “nonmedical factors that influence health outcomes.” Those can include whether a person has access to clean air and water, a well-balanced diet, exercise, a good education, career opportunities, economic stability and a safe place to live.

HHS’ Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion writes that “people who don’t have access to grocery stores with healthy foods are less likely to have good nutrition. That raises their risk of health conditions like heart disease, diabetes, and obesity — and even lowers life expectancy relative to people who do have access to healthy foods.” 

Cole’s summary of the HHS spending bill says that program “promoted social engineering while distracting grant recipients from combating infectious and chronic diseases.” 

The American Public Health Association urged Congress to approve the bill, writing in a statement the compromise “rightly maintains funding for most public health agencies and programs.”

“While the bill is not perfect and we disagree with cuts to several HHS agency programs included, overall, the agreement rejects the devastating cuts and nonsensical agency reorganizations proposed by the Trump administration and is a positive outcome,” APHA wrote. “Importantly, the bill also includes language to ensure that CDC and other health agencies maintain an adequate level of staffing to carry out their statutory responsibilities. 

“The bill will also ensure that Congress exercises its oversight over any future proposed agency reorganizations.”