Oregon arts and culture leaders are optimistic that Congress will renew funding for the National Endowment of the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities in next year’s federal budget, although only at the current levels.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a Fiscal Year 2026 ominibus appropriations bill by a vote of 397 to 28 on Jan. 8 that included $207 million each for the NEA and NEH. It includes funding for multiple other federal agencies, too, including the Department of Commerce, the Department of Justice, and the Department of the Interior.

The bill now moves to the U.S. Senate, which is expected to take up the legislation during the week of Jan. 12-16. If approved, it must be signed by President Trump to be enacted into law.

“In an overwhelming sign of bipartisan support for the arts and culture in Congress, the Interior bill approved $207 million each, with no cuts, for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH),” the Arts Action Fund advocacy organization said in a breaking-news email the day of the House vote. “Thank you for your persistent advocacy over the last year, your voices were heard!

“At this time, we do not anticipate any roadblocks.”

Amy Lewin, the recently appointed Director of Arts and Culture at Business Oregon, praised the House vote.

“Overall, it’s reassuring. This would allow us to continue our plan of steady support for hundreds of arts organizations across Oregon, providing essential operational and project funding that fuels jobs and creativity in every corner of our state,” said Lewin, who serves as the director of the Oregon Arts Commission and the Oregon Cultural Trust for the state’s economic development agency.

Sponsor

The news was also welcomed by Oregon Humanities, the independent, nonprofit NEH affiliate established in 1971 that is one of five statewide partners of the Oregon Cultural Trust.

“The ominibus passed by the House is provisional good news,” Oregon Humanities Communications Director Ben Waterhouse told Oregon ArtsWatch. “We are pleased to see steady funding for NEA and NEH, given the overall decrease in the federal budget. We will hold off on celebrations until the bill is passed by the Senate and signed by the President and we see a notice of action from NEH regarding funding for state councils.”

The House vote was also appreciated by the Cultural Advocacy Coalition of Oregon, the only statewide nonprofit dedicated to advocating for public support of the arts, culture, heritage, and humanities in Oregon. The organization’s Board of Directors said the proposal represents “a silver lining in an otherwise hostile federal budget environment,” although increased funding would be better.

“After years of rising costs, inflation, increased demand, and expanding responsibilities placed on cultural organizations, flat funding means less real-world capacity for arts and humanities work across the country. Grant dollars do not go as far as they did even two years ago, and organizations are being asked to do more with less,” the CACO board said in an email.

According to the email, NEA and NEH funding had risen from $167.5 million each in fiscal year 2021 to $180 million each in fiscal year 2022 and $207 million each in fiscal years 2023, 2024, and 2025.

“We reached $207M through sustained advocacy and bipartisan recognition of the value arts and humanities bring to education, economic development, and civic life. Freezing funding at that level, however, risks undoing that progress over time,” the email said.

“We must continue pushing for funding levels that recognize inflation, demand, and the outsized return on investment that arts and humanities programs deliver in every state.”

Sponsor

Nevertheless, earlier this year, it was uncertain that the Republican-controlled Congress would support funding the NEA and NEH at all. As documented by Oregon Artswatch, 2025 began with the Trump Administration canceling thousands of previously approved arts and culture grants across in the country. By early May 2025, at least 27 Oregon organizations reported losing NEA and NEH grants totaling a minimum of $590,000. During a May 14 appearance on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Think Out Loud, Oregon ArtsWatch’s Claire Willett estimated the total losses were actually closer to $800,000.

Then, over the summer, the Trump Administration and Republican-controlled Congress completely defunded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which was created in 1967 to channel federal funds to public radio and TV stations across the country. The cut, which was effective on Oct. 1, hit Oregon nonprofit organizations hard.

The CPB  had provided up to 98% of all funding to dozens of stations in the state in 2023, the most recent year for which figures are available for all stations. For example, Oregon Public Broadcast lost $5 million in previously approved funding, All Classical Radio in Portland lost $1 million, Jefferson Public Radio in Southern Oregon lost $1 million in each of the next two years, and KBOO-FM, a community radio station in Portland, lost approximately $110,000, which was more than 9% of its budget. Most were able to recover immediately losses through emergency funding drives, although future years are less certain.

On January 5 the CPB’s board of directors announced that had dissolved the organization. ArtsWatch repoted on the dissolution here and on Oregon public media leaders’ reaction to the corporation’s demise here.

“Funding is flat and flat is not enough, but it is better than the alternative we narrowly avoided,” the Cultural Advocacy Coalition of Oregon board said in its email.

A previous Oregon ArtsWatch story on the 2025 arts and culture federal funding cuts can be found at orartswatch.org/arts-politics-2025-trump-assaults-top-the-years-cultural-news.