Key U.S. senators from both parties on Thursday decisively rejected virtually all the Trump administration’s proposals to slash K-12 education investments—and pushed back against its efforts to shrink the Department of Education and move its functions to other agencies.
Fourteen Republicans and twelve Democrats voted on July 31 to advance a federal budget bill for education, labor, and health to a full floor vote, tentatively slated for September. Two Democrats and one Republican voted against the measure.
The bill and its accompanying Senate committee report spell out modest increases over current funding levels for key education programs like Title I for low-income students ($18.5 billion proposed, up from the current $18.4 billion), the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act for special education ($15.5 billion, up from $15.4 billion currently), and Head Start for early-childhood instruction ($12.3 billion, currently funded a bit below that level).
It maintains all existing federal K-12 grant programs as separate funding streams with roughly level year-over-year funding, including for teacher training, literacy instruction, rural schools, and services for homeless students and English learners.
It extends current-year funding and staffing levels for key Education Department offices the Trump administration has dismantled in recent months, including the office for civil rights ($140 million), the Institute of Education Sciences ($793 million), and comprehensive centers that provide technical assistance to states and districts ($50 million).
And it includes new requirements for the Education Department to send funds to states and schools on time; maintain staffing necessary to execute tasks required by law; and prohibit the department from offloading core functions to other agencies.
“I think it’s a sign that Congress is more reflecting what the public says, which is that it does not want to cut education funding, it does not want to eliminate the Department of Ed., and that the administration is standing alone in its mission to make these really unpopular changes that would be bad for constituents,” said Sarah Abernathy, executive director of the Committee for Education Funding, a coalition of advocacy groups.
The budget bill, however, is far from finalized. It still needs support from 60 members in the full Senate.
And it could be drastically different from the House version, which isn’t due for a comparable markup until early September.
Recent federal budget cycles have culminated in government shutdown threats and continuing resolutions that delay final funding decisions, sometimes indefinitely.
If eventually approved by both chambers and signed into law by President Donald Trump, the budget would take effect Oct. 1, the start of the federal government’s 2026 fiscal year. States and schools would begin receiving most education funding beginning next July for the 2026-27 school year—assuming the Trump administration doesn’t withholds funds at the last minute, as it did this year.
Congress often differs from the president on budget priorities
The Senate committee session marks the first time federal lawmakers have taken a position on Trump’s education budget proposal, two months after the White House published it.
The Senate version of the budget differs on nearly all the priorities Trump laid out. In addition to all the education-specific funding allocations, the bill includes funding for several programs and agencies the Trump administration has already moved to unravel, including AmeriCorps and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
His administration’s budget documents proposed slashing overall Education Department investments by 15 percent; consolidating 18 separate K-12 grant programs worth $6.5 billion into a single funding stream worth just $2 billion; and rewriting special education law to give states more leeway on spending funds for students with disabilities.
But Congress has no obligation to rubber-stamp the president’s proposal. None of those proposals appear in the Senate budget bill now endorsed by more than two dozen appropriators.
Lawmakers historically haven’t shied away from charting their own course on appropriations, even when the same party controls both Congress and the White House. But some observers expected this year to be different, as Republicans have shown reluctance to differ from Trump.
But during Thursday’s meeting, Sens. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., and Shelly Moore Capito, R-W.Va., touted the budget bill—which covers education as well as defense, labor, and health and human services—as an example of successful bipartisan compromise.
Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to impound funds remain a wild card
Still, the prospect of more efforts by the White House to subvert congressional spending decisions has some lawmakers and advocates concerned.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., in recent days has urged her Democratic colleagues against participating in the appropriations process unless the Trump administration provides assurances it won’t override lawmakers’ priorities. Republicans, despite holding slim majorities in both chambers, will need support from at least seven Democratic senators to cross the 60-vote threshold for budget bills.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said Thursday that he voted no on the education spending package out of concern “that the president is simply going to ignore the will of Congress that’s expressed in this legislation.”
Baldwin called Russell Vought, Trump’s appointed director of the federal Office of Management and Budget, an “unelected bureaucrat” who’s improperly meddling with spending. Vought has long teased a plan to effectively negate congressional spending decisions by withholding funds until they expire on Sept. 30, the last day of the federal fiscal year.
Numerous lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s unilateral cuts to funding already approved by Congress are underway. Several courts have ruled in favor of plaintiffs and ordered the administration to restore frozen funds.
The Government Accountability Office, an independent federal watchdog, has so far found four instances in which the Trump administration illegally impounded federal funds; its latest opinion, on grants for public schools to improve their facilities, came out Thursday.
In some cases, bipartisan backlash appears to have stymied Trump administration efforts to disrupt education funding. The Education Department just last week ended a weekslong freeze on nearly $7 billion of education funds for the upcoming school year that were due by law to flow to states July 1 after lawmakers from both parties objected.
Those funds flow through seven separate grant programs the Trump administration proposed to cut in the 2026-27 school year—sparking concern from lawmakers, state officials, district leaders, and education advocates that the administration was attempting to implement its budget priorities before Congress, armed with the constitutional power of the purse, weighed in.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration also terminated or disrupted billions of dollars for teacher preparation, mental health, education research, and pandemic relief, all without asking Congress for permission as federal law requires.
Administration officials have teased plans to formally request that Congress rescind some current-year education appropriations, but that proposal hasn’t yet materialized, and there’s no guarantee Congress would approve it.
A bipartisan vote in favor of maintaining federal education investments could bolster efforts to oppose illegal actions by the Trump administration, Abernathy said.
“There is no spending police that can force the Department of Ed. to follow the law,” Abernathy said. “But I think Congress repeatedly publicly voting and writing letters and demanding that funding that is enacted be provided, and they want funding to be maintained, not to be slashed, is a pretty strong sentiment.”
