Our 2019 and 2020 articles on how House committees are funded have been updated for the 117th Congress.

Committee funding in the House of Representatives is accomplished through a somewhat obscure process. Appropriators on the House Legislative Branch Appropriations Committee set a top dollar amount for the committees — they appropriate the funds — but it is the Committee on House Administration that provides (i.e. allots) the funds to each committee on a biennial basis.

At the beginning of each new Congress, each committee chair and ranking member are given the opportunity to jointly testify before the House Administration Committee and request funds for their committee. In recent years, few committees have testified, and most but not all chairs and ranking members agree upon a common request. This year, most committees introduced their individual committee funding resolutions, then the Committee on House Administration considered a funding resolution (H. Res. 316) on April 14th, and held a markup on April 15th; the resolution passed the House on April 20, 2021.

During the markup, Chair Lofgren noted that each committee would receive an increase in funding of roughly 5% over the last Congress. While this is a notable increase, House committees are still significantly below their funding levels from a decade ago. What does this look like in context? We reviewing decades of funding for House committees, excluding the Appropriations committee — see the un-adjusted committee spending data and the inflation-adjusted committee spending data covering 1995-2021 — and found:

Senate committees are at the heart of the legislative process, but what resources are provided for them to do their work? We reviewed the funding levels for Senate committees this Congress as compared to last Congress and over the decades. Here is what we found: 

Senate committees are funded at $238.2 million for the 117th Congress. This represents an 8.2% or $18 million increase from last Congress’s $220.2 million funding level. There is an average increase of $1 million or 8.7% per committee.

Senate committee funding is down by $59 million or 19.9% from the 111th Congress, where it peaked at $297.3 million. Funding this Democratically-controlled Congress also falls short of the Republican-controlled 109th Congress, when Senate committees were funded at $248 million.

Half of Senate committees experienced cuts in funding levels between the 107th and 117th Congresses. In addition, just one committee received a 20% increase from 2001 to 2021 — the Intelligence Committee.

(Please note this analysis excludes funding for the Appropriations Committee, which is funded through a separate mechanism, and we are using constant 2021 dollars.)

Every year Congress determines exactly how much money will be made available to the Legislative Branch and the purpose for which it can be spent. The Legislative Branch Appropriations bills directs congressional spending, line-item by line-item — but, alas, the instructions are published as prose, can run for dozens of pages, and it is difficult to see how appropriations spending has changed over the decades.

We’ve gone through  all of the spending bills for the last quarter-century and lined up the spending items in a downloadable spreadsheet. Now you can see how spending on each line-item has changed from 1994 forward.

Peruse the Legislative Branch budget line items from fiscal years 1994-2021 below, or download the data set here. 

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