Future funding for the Institute of Museum and Library Services cleared a legislative hurdle this week, with the House Appropriations Committee endorsing a $291,800,000 IMLS budget for fiscal 2026. The Senate Appropriations Committee also has approved that funding amount without amendment.
The IMLS budget is among the line items under consideration for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (LHHS), and the committee's markup of the bill lasted from 11 a.m. September 9 through 12:30 a.m. September 10. The LHHS budget now advances to the full Senate and full House of Representatives for consideration and a vote.
Kevin Maher, the American Library Association’s deputy director of public policy and advocacy, is observing the progress toward funding IMLS. “Overall, it was a decent bill,” Maher said, with “a $400,000 increase for the Library Services and Technology Act” that would support the statutory Grants to States program. “They held the line on other library programs too,” Maher said, including discretionary grants such as Innovative Approaches to Literacy, a school libraries bill administered by the Department of Education.
In both FY2024 and FY2025, Congress appropriated $294.8 million for IMLS, “so essentially we’re operating with 2024 numbers for most of the programs,” Maher said. The $3,000,000 reduction in IMLS’s budget will affect museums and IMLS administration, he noted, “which is a little surprising, but we’re happy that both the House and the Senate bills included an increase for our libraries.”
Maher believes ALA’s For Our Libraries campaign, urging library advocates to contact their representatives, “paid off,” adding, “Congress appears to recognize the value of our libraries.” He hopes supporters will continue making calls. “Part of the reason to continue to make the case for libraries is that it’s still up to the administration to spend the money,” he said. “If the administration goes to rescission, we want to make this a difficult vote for Congress,” where reps will stand firm for library funding.
That concern is warranted. Earlier this week, Sen. Patty Murray (D–Wash.), vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, wrote that the Trump administration is holding back more than $410 billion in appropriated funding during the final weeks of FY2025, in what’s widely become known as a pocket recission. An appropriations tracker titled “Trump’s Funding Freeze” indicates that this sum includes more than $330,000,000 in canceled grants once slated for the National Endowment for the Humanities, $326,000,000 in terminated grants for the National Endowment for the Arts, and $30,000,000 meant for IMLS.
“Funding to support the work of museum[s], historic sites, colleges, universities, libraries, and other organizations…is being choked off,” the document states. “Public libraries across the country continue to be at risk of losing essential funding and support.”
