Continuing Appropriations and Extensions and Other Matters Act, 2026

Keeps the federal government running through October 31, 2025 by paying for programs at their fiscal year 2025 rates whenever this Act does not set a different amount.

Treats emergency-designated money carried into this Act as already designated so it can be spent, and permanently drops the requirement that the President also designate an amount before Congress's emergency designation takes effect.

Permanently requires that money Congress has appropriated actually be released in time to be spent: it cancels part of the impoundment law, bars holding funds back during their final 90 days, and requires agencies to be given all of an appropriation for immediate use, with no conditions attached, at least 90 days before it expires.

Sets funding for the WIC nutrition program for women, infants and children at a rate for operations of $8,200,000,000 a year instead of the across-the-board rate.

Adds $326.5 million to protect federal officials and buildings: $30 million for U.S. Marshals protective operations and judicial security, $30 million for courthouse security renovations, $28 million to protect Supreme Court Justices' homes, $52 million for security improvements at federal courthouses, $90 million for House member security, $66.5 million for Senate member, residential and state-office security, and $30 million to reimburse Capitol Police mutual aid; the Marshals Service must report to Congress every quarter on its protective details, their cost, and the threat information behind them.

Bars any federal funds, from this or any other law, from being used to pause, cancel or end the Air Force E-7 Wedgetail aircraft program or to prepare to do so, moves $200 million within the Air Force to that program, and allows up to $199,676,000 more to keep it on schedule.

Creates a new Inspector General over the White House budget office, requires the President to appoint one within 45 days, and provides $20,000,000 for that office, exempt from the budget office's own apportionment control.

Appropriates $490,960,000 to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting on top of the across-the-board funding, to be paid out within three days of enactment, while blocking two sub-allocations in the usual distribution formula.

Requires the Housing and Urban Development Secretary, by December 15, 2025, to renew without competition every existing Continuum of Care homeless-assistance grant and youth homelessness demonstration project expiring in 2026 for another 12 months, using 2025 fair market rents and a cost-of-living adjustment for supportive services.

Removes the rule that cut off Affordable Care Act premium tax credits for households earning more than four times the poverty level, so households above that line can qualify for help paying premiums starting with tax year 2026, and replaces the sliding scale that sets what enrollees pay (the replacement table itself is not reproduced in the text provided).

Holds agencies to what they were already doing: no starting or resuming any activity that was not funded in fiscal year 2025, and at the Defense Department no new production of items, no raising production rates above 2025 levels, and no new multi-year procurement deals.

Tells agencies to take only the most limited funding actions needed to keep projects going, and blocks the usual practice of pushing out a full year's grants and payments to states, grantees and foreign countries at the start of the year.

Keeps benefit payments people are owed by law flowing at the rate needed to maintain current program levels, including food-stamp (SNAP) activities, and lets payments due at the start of a month keep going for up to 30 days after this Act's end date.

Lets agencies spend enough on civilian pay and benefits to avoid furloughing workers, but only after they have first cut or delayed non-personnel administrative costs.

Bars any agency from using funds to raise, cut, or end a program's funding the way the President's budget request proposed, until Congress enacts that change in an appropriations law.

Carries over prior spending cancellations by trimming the flat rate instead, capped at the balances actually left on October 1, 2025, and requires the White House budget office to give Congress a complete list of those cancellations, kept up to date on request.

Revives money that was about to be lost on September 30, 2025 because it was never released for spending in time, keeps it available until September 30, 2026, and orders the Government Accountability Office to audit whether the rule is being followed.

Keeps a set of expiring authorities running during this period, including livestock price reporting, the U.S. Parole Commission, an aviation security requirement, and several program deadlines.

Keeps expired but uncancelled Space Shuttle program money available through fiscal year 2030 so valid bills from work done between 2001 and 2013 can still be paid.

Requires NASA to keep every science mission that was operating, being extended, or in development on September 1, 2025 going during this funding period.

Requires the National Science Foundation and NOAA's research office to be funded at the level needed to keep research facilities, laboratories, cooperative institutes and existing scientific awards operating at their current level.

Requires the Commerce Department to renew every manufacturing-extension cooperative agreement in each state and Puerto Rico on the same terms as before, unless the recipient asks for something different.

Lets five programs spend faster than the flat rate when demand requires it: U.S. Marshals operations, Small Business Administration loan guarantees, FEMA's disaster relief fund, wildfire suppression, and Essential Air Service payments to air carriers.

Allows up to $154 million to finish previously funded Virginia-class submarine work, and raises a nuclear weapons activities funding floor at the National Nuclear Security Administration from $118,056,000 to $149,244,000.

Extends the Calfed Bay-Delta water program through 2026 and raises one of its spending limits from $30,000,000 to $32,600,000.

Locks four Energy Department program areas, energy efficiency and renewables, electricity, fossil energy and carbon management, and energy cybersecurity, to the specific program-by-program amounts in an earlier congressional spending table, and switches off the department's usual authority to move that money around.

Requires the Energy Secretary to finish hot commissioning of the Hanford low-activity radioactive waste treatment plant in Washington State by October 15, 2025, unless the state agrees to a later date, and then to run it fast enough to meet a court consent-decree milestone.

Lets the District of Columbia spend its own locally raised money at the rate set in its own 2026 local budget law.

Sets three specific funding rates instead of the flat rate: $1,534,910,000 for federal public defenders, with authority to pay court-appointed lawyers' bills as they come due; $237,662,000 for the Treasury office that tracks terrorist financing; and a $21,630,000 shift between two Office of Personnel Management accounts.

Adjusts how a federal personnel provision carried over from last year's law applies across the 2025-to-2026 pay-period boundary; the text provided does not reproduce that provision, so what it changes for workers cannot be stated from this text.

Adds $80,315,000 to the Indian Health Service to staff and run health facilities that were opened, renovated or expanded in 2025 and 2026.

Sets the Head Start base grant for the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of the Marshall Islands at $8,000,000 each.

Pays $174,000 each to the families of three House members who died in office, and blocks the automatic cost-of-living pay raise for members of Congress during this funding period.

Adds $6,865,235 to cover the cost of direct home loans for Native American veterans, enough to support up to $75,000,000 in loans.

Lets the United States buy up to 40,000 more shares of paid-in capital in the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and authorizes $437,457,804 to pay for it, with the money available only if a future appropriations law provides it.

Cancels leftover 2022 highway competitive-award money and leftover 2024 fair-housing money and immediately re-appropriates the same amounts, so those same awards can be finished without a new competition.

Lets housing voucher money be used to keep families from losing their rental assistance because the 2025 funding cycle came up short, with three business days' notice to Congress before the money is allotted.

Funds community health centers ($373,698,630), the National Health Service Corps ($30,897,398), teaching health center residency programs ($17,074,653) and type 1 and Indian diabetes programs ($13,523,490 each) for the month of October 2025, and pushes public health emergency, preparedness and kinship-caregiver support authorities out to October 31, 2025.

Adds $67,000,000 for fiscal year 2026, available until spent, to run the system that settles surprise medical bills between insurers and providers.

Extends Medicare rules that were set to lapse on September 30, 2025 through October 31, 2025, including telehealth from any location, audio-only telehealth, telehealth for mental health without an in-person visit first, hospital-at-home care, ambulance add-on payments, and payment protections for Medicare-dependent and low-volume hospitals.

Cuts the Medicare Improvement Fund from $1,804,000,000 to $1,033,000,000.

Extends for one month a set of health and family programs, including sexual risk avoidance education, personal responsibility education, family-to-family health information centers, Tennessee's disproportionate-share hospital allotment and the behavioral health clinic demonstration, and pushes the scheduled Medicaid cuts to hospitals that serve many uninsured patients back by one month.

Repeals a health subtitle of a 2025 reconciliation law and directs that every law and regulation it touched be applied as if it had never been enacted; the text provided does not say what that subtitle changed, so its real-world effect cannot be stated from this text.

Extends veterans' benefits and services for the month of October 2025, including nursing home care for certain veterans with service-connected disabilities, VA transportation, copayment collection authority, $35,000,000 for supportive services for very low-income veteran families, and the Fox suicide prevention grant program.

Extends other expiring authorities to October 31, 2025, including the Defense Production Act, cybersecurity information sharing, the National Cybersecurity Protection System, state and local cybersecurity grants, counter-drone protection of certain facilities, grain standards, Food for Peace, alternative-fuel vehicles in carpool lanes, and the commodity futures whistleblower program.

Keeps this division's budget effects off both pay-as-you-go scorecards and out of the spending-cap and appropriations-committee allocation estimates, so its costs are not counted against those limits.