Last Week in Congress (10/12–10/16/26)
An update will be shared every week that Congress is in session. This will include a short summary of the past week in Congress, as well as a listing of all education-related bills introduced in the House and Senate, relevant Committee and Floor activity, and education-related hearings.
Last week, Senators Patty Murray, Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Tammy Baldwin, Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education sent a letter to Secretary McMahon urging her to reverse the Department’s use of “frontloading” federal grants, noting that the Department’s funding decisions substantially reduce the number of new awards made in FY2026. The Senators’ letter states that approximately $630 million in federal funding across 35 education grant programs was committed to future-year funding rather than additional grants. Based on historical annual funding practices, available funds could have supported more than 1,000 additional awards. The letter spotlights immediate consequences for applicants: stable program appropriations do not necessarily mean a comparable number of new grants. The Department’s frontloading also raises a separate legal concern: If the Department claims to obligate several years of funding now, but reserves the right to decide later whether to honor that later-year commitment, has it actually obligated those funds? That question, placed in the context of the Department’s proposed revisions to EDGAR, connects the current frontloading debate to the Administration’s separate efforts to use “pocket rescissions” to allow appropriations to expire without being obligated.
· H.R. 10799 (Grothman, R-WI), to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to modernize the wage required for exempt H-1B[EM1] workers (Judiciary).
· H.R. 10801 (Mace, R-SC), the School Freedom Act of 2026, to direct the Secretary of the Treasury to carry out a program under which Federal funds for elementary and secondary education are either provided directly to parents to cover certain educational expenses or approved by parents for distribution to the public school their child attends (Education and Workforce; Ways and Means).
· H.R. 10805 (Schneider, D-IL), the Don’t Block LGBTQ Act of 2026, to amend the Communications Act of 1934 to prohibit schools and public libraries that receive universal service support from blocking internet access to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer resources (Energy and Commerce).
· H.R. 10815 (Correa, D-CA), the Bright Beginnings Act, to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to establish a credit for amounts paid or incurred by child care providers to advance innovation and access for developmentally disabled individuals (Ways and Means).
· H.R. 10835 (Torres, D-CA), to amend the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act to establish demonstration and pilot projects to facilitate education and training programs in the field of advanced manufacturing (Education and Workforce).