We’ve been bugging you all summer to write your Congressional representatives about the the National Limb Loss Resource Center. As you might recall, the White House’s budget request completely defunded the NLLRC. But the House and Senate write the actual budget, and they don’t have to accept the administration’s preferences. Back in 2017, the White House also sought to zero out the NLLRC, but Congressional budget-writers funded the program anyway.
Will history repeat itself in 2025? Did all of your cards, letters, phone calls, and emails to Congressional offices have any impact on legislators’ decisions? Have the Amputee Coalition’s dogged efforts to preserve the program’s funding paid off? A key committee report, released a few days ago, offered the first hint about where things are headed on Capitol Hill—and, big sigh of relief, the news is encouraging. The Senate Appropriations Committee approved a bill that would retain funding for the NLLRC at $4.2 million for Fiscal Year 2026, the same level as FY 2025.
That doesn’t guarantee anything—while the bill did win a majority in the committee, it still has to pass the full Senate. And some version of the same bill will have to pass the House of Representatives’ appropriations committee, and then the full House. Given the narrow majority in the House and the complex, at times self-contradicting factions within that majority, there’s no telling what might happen in that wing of the Capitol. So this is no time to ease up on the accelerator: Keep the pressure on, particularly vis-a-vis these 17 members of the House.
But the Senate Appropriation’s Committee’s action is hugely significant. First of all, we can safely assume that it reflects the sentiment of the full Senate. Committee members likely wouldn’t have included this line item if it lacked broad support. And, as we’ve said all along, members of Congress overwhelmingly do support the NLLRC, notwithstanding the White House’s desire to defund it.
If the full Senate ultimately does approve funding for the NLLRC, that will make it extraordinarily difficult for the House to engineer a different outcome. Even if the House decides to defund the NLLRC, or to fund it at a lower level, differences between the House and Senate bills will ultimately need to be reconciled—and it’s hard to imagine that a majority of the House would go to the mat over such a small, broadly popular program.
We live in strange times, so there are no guarantees. But until two weeks ago, we would have bet that Congress would end up defunding the NLLRC entirely. The fact that the program may actually survive completely intact is a major cause for celebration. We’ll keep you updated when the House returns from its summer recess next month.
