On July 10, the Senate Appropriations Committee unanimously voted its version of the FY2026 Agriculture Food and Drug Administration (FDA) spending bill out of committee, allocating $7 billion to the FDA. This represents essentially level funding with FY2025 levels. The House Appropriations Committee advanced a $6.8 billion FDA budget last month that aligned more closely with the administration’s requested levels and policies.
Next Steps
The Senate bill must still go to the Senate floor to be voted on by the full Senate. During that process, the bill could be amended, though major changes to top line numbers are unlikely. There is no timeline announced yet for when that will happen. Once the bills are passed, the House and Senate Appropriators will need to negotiate a joint version of the bill, likely through a conference committee.
While the top line budget numbers do not sound dramatically different from the House version, the bills are over $200 million dollars apart in spending levels with noteworthy policy differences that will need to be ironed out. The Senate Committee version of the bill, for instance, instructs FDA to lift hiring restrictions for scientists, product reviewers, and inspectors within 30 days of enactment, a provision not included in the House bill.
Blood Center Implications
Important report language for blood centers is included encouraging FDA to continue to monitor the impact of revised donor deferral policy. This language should allow blood centers to urge the agency to continue important monitoring programs such as Transfusion-Transmissible Infection Monitoring System (TTIMS). It also contains language urging FDA to modify guidance to allow for the use of pathogen reduction in lieu of certain donor deferrals. As noted, all of these policy changes would need to be incorporated into a single bill that passes both chambers.
Additional Appropriations of Note
In addition to the funding for FDA, ABC is monitoring other spending bills for potential impacts on blood centers, including the Homeland security bill, which includes funding for the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), as well as the Labor/HHS spending bill which includes funding broadly including public health and divisions of HHS that support the blood supply, including BARDA.
The Broader Picture
The FDA bill is one of 12 appropriations bills that would need to pass before October 1 to avoid the need for a continuing resolution (CR) or face a government shutdown. However, it is important to note that this process of passing all 12 appropriations bills prior to the new fiscal year without requiring any CRs hasn’t occurred since 1996 (to fund FY1997). This year, political discord may make coming to the necessary agreement to fund the government a more challenging prospect. It is widely anticipated that some CRs will be required, and ultimately the spending bills will likely be passed through larger omnibus bills that lump together multiple spending bills. However, it is unclear at this time exactly what that process or timeline will look like.
ABC will continue to monitor this as it moves through the process.