Inside (the Beltway) Scoop

By: Ellen Kuo
Thursday, February 26, 2026
Fiscal Year (FY 2027) Appropriations Season Begins

Despite not seeing the president’s FY 2027 budget, many constituents are already sending their programmatic appropriations request forms to their Senators’ or Representatives’ offices. Several congressional offices have on their websites, under “Services,” a link to a form or portal where their constituents can fill in their contact information and provide detailed information about why their request is worthy of taxpayer funding. However, some offices require you to create your own form to send in. Additionally, every office has its own deadlines and formatting. If you have questions, please contact the office by phone or email.  

Every office wants to know how the program or agency in question impacts either the state or the congressional district, and which of the 12 appropriations subcommittees your request falls under. If you are a member of a coalition that supports your requested funding level, as FASEB is with the Ad Hoc Group for Medical Research, it is useful to provide this detail in your forms, especially where your request matches theirs of $51.3 billion for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in FY 2027. It is also helpful to provide a real-life example of how the funding has supported your research area and any results that have been shown.  However, keeping it concise and to the point is recommended, as many offices set a 300- or 400- word limit on the text one can submit on the form.

FASEB’s members will be on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, March 18 meeting with both chambers and members from all political parties about our FY 2027 funding recommendations for key agencies that provide grants to the extramural community such as the NIH, National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy Office of Science, the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative, and the Veteran Administration Medical and Prosthetic Research program. Our FY 2027 recommendations will be posted on our website by early March, and our updated factsheets with agency data for each state will be available by March 16. District level agency funding information is only available to members of FASEB societies. We hope this information will be useful to the community as individuals make their requests to lawmakers.

As noted above, the White House missed the traditional deadline of the first Monday in February to submit the president’s annual budget request to Congress. Although no official date has been provided by the administration, there are rumors that the FY 2027 president’s budget will be released to Capitol Hill in early or mid-March.