Why It Matters

A newly updated Congressional Research Service (CRS) report cuts to the heart of one of Washington's most persistent navigational headaches: when Congress wants to fund, cut, or restructure a federal agency, lawmakers first have to know which of the 12 annual appropriations bills actually controls the money.

The federal budget does not organize itself the way a government org chart does. Cabinet departments are split across multiple bills. Programs with obvious-sounding homes are funded elsewhere. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), for instance, is not in the Labor-HHS-Education bill, it lives in the Agriculture appropriations bill. The Forest Service, a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) agency, is funded under Interior-Environment, not Agriculture. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) draws from three separate bills depending on which component you're looking at.

For Members of Congress, staff, lobbyists, and the public, engaging the wrong subcommittee at the wrong moment can derail a funding request, misfire an amendment, or stall an oversight effort entirely.

That's what this CRS Report, authored by Senior Research Librarian Justin Murray and updated June 15, 2026, is designed to resolve. Now in its 18th version, it functions as a congressional appropriations guide, mapping hundreds of federal agencies and programs to their correct funding bills through the 119th Congress.

The Big Picture

The Appropriations Bills Agency Maze

Congress funds the federal government through 12 distinct annual appropriations bills, each managed by a specific subcommittee of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. The 12 bills covering the 119th Congress are:

  • Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies
  • Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies
  • Defense
  • Energy and Water Development, and Related Agencies
  • Financial Services and General Government
  • Homeland Security
  • Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies
  • Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies
  • Legislative Branch
  • Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies
  • National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs (House) / State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs (Senate)
  • Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies

Where the Complexity Lives

Several high-profile agencies carry split funding across more than one bill. The Department of Defense draws from both the Defense bill and the Military Construction-Veterans Affairs bill. The Army, Navy, Air Force, National Guard, and Missile Defense Agency all appear in both. HHS components are scattered across Labor-HHS-Education, Interior-Environment, and Agriculture depending on the specific program.

Some entries in the table carry a different designation altogether: "Nonfederal Funding." The American National Red Cross, the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Research Council all appear in the report with that label, meaning they receive no federal appropriations through these bills.

One structural change worth noting: in the 119th Congress, the House Appropriations Committee renamed its foreign affairs subcommittee from "State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs" to "National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs." The Senate did not follow suit, leaving the two chambers with different names for subcommittees with identical jurisdiction, a detail that matters when tracking which bill governs agencies like United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Peace Corps, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation.

Political Stakes

The Trump administration's second term has centered heavily on reducing the size and scope of the federal government, with efforts touching agencies across nearly every one of the 12 bills. Understanding the locate agency appropriations structure is, in practice, the first step to legislatively acting on any of those targets.

Consider where the administration's highest-profile priorities sit within the federal budget bills:

Foreign aid and international programs. USAID, the Peace Corps, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and the United Nations assessed dues all run through the National Security-State (House) / State-Foreign Operations (Senate) bill. Executive action to curtail these programs has raised legal questions about whether administrative shutdowns can substitute for congressional defunding. Formal elimination requires action through that specific subcommittee.

Border and immigration enforcement. Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Transportation Security Administration, and the Coast Guard all flow through the Homeland Security appropriations bill, the subcommittee most central to the administration's enforcement agenda. Any legislative effort to expand or redirect those resources runs through that bill.

Energy priorities. The Department of Energy, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Bureau of Reclamation are spread across Energy-Water and Interior-Environment. An administration pushing energy dominance as a core priority needs congressional allies working the right subcommittees.

Domestic program restructuring. AmeriCorps and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, both targets of administration budget proposals, are funded under Labor-HHS-Education. The Department of Education, also a reorganization target, sits in the same bill.

The report's FY2026 update reflects that Congress passed a consolidated appropriations package, P.L. 119-37, in November 2025, covering FY2026 funding across multiple bills. That kind of consolidated approach, rather than passing all 12 bills individually, has been a recurring tension between calls for regular order and Congress's practical constraints, and it affects how cleanly any individual agency's funding can be targeted.

Worth Noting

The fact that this is version 18 of the report signals the subcommittee structure and agency assignments shift over time and reorganizations create new agencies. Jurisdictional changes move programs between bills. Any administration effort to restructure or eliminate agencies would directly affect which appropriations bill governs the successor entities, requiring this document to be updated again.

The Bottom Line

The appropriations process is more fragmented and counterintuitive than most observers assume. The fact that CRS has updated this navigational guide 18 times over its life reflects how often the map changes, and how much it matters to have an accurate one. For an administration and a Congress both focused on reshaping the size and composition of the federal government, this document is foundational.

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