3rd FY 2026 Minibus Announced – FinServices and State

Yesterday the two appropriations committees separately (Senate and House)announced the proposed language for the third minibus spending bill for FY 2026, covering Financial Services and General Government, and National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs. The House Rules Committee also announced that they would hold a rule hearing on Tuesday that would include the new spending bill. The bill will be introduced later today and be assigned an HR number at that time. There is an interesting ‘minority view’ of the bill from the Senate Democrats.

The proposed bill consists of three divisions:

DIVISION A – Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act, 2026,

DIVISION B – National  Security, Department of State, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2026, and

DIVISION C – Other  Matters

The ‘other matters’ division is relatively short. It would prohibit funding for United Nations Relief and Works Agency. I suspect that it was added as a separate division instead of being combined with Division B, so that a separate vote could be held on this provision. This would have been included in the bill as an enticement for the spending hawks.

As with HR 6938, this bill will be treated as a conference bill, with Joint Explanatory Statements available for each division. Again, I would not be surprised to see separate votes on retaining each of the three divisions.

If this bill is passed, and I expect that it will, there will be just three spending bills left to consider:

Homeland Security,

Labor-HHS-Education, and

Transportation-HUD.

These three bills would contain the most controversial programs and spending topics and will be the most difficult to produce a consensus version which could pass in both the House and Senate. It is very likely that Congress will have to resort to a continuing resolution with current funding continuing through September 30^th, 2026.