Appropriations Priorities

Senator Schatz is interested in hearing from you about funding that benefits Hawai‘i and our nation.  Should you have specific suggestions or comments on appropriations priorities for the current appropriations process, you may submit them for consideration through this website.  These forms request detailed information that is best provided by organizations, agencies, nonprofits, and firms that are local recipients, administrators, or stakeholders of federal programmatic funding.  If you would like to make more general comments about federal programs, please do so using Senator Schatz’s contact page. The full jurisdiction of each subcommittee is viewable on the committee’s web site, www.appropriations.senate.gov.

For your reference, the president’s budget requests are posted on this website: https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/.  The president’s budget is normally released within first few months of each calendar year.  If the president's fiscal year 2024 budget is released prior to our application deadline, please include the relevant amount requested in president's budget in your application.

Congressionally Directed Spending Items

On April 26, 2021, the Senate Appropriations Committee announced it is accepting requests for “congressionally directed spending items,” which are often called earmarks. 

Please note that the Appropriations Committee has set these conditions on congressionally directed spending items.

• Requests from for-profit entities are not allowed.
• Requests are only allowed in certain eligible accounts.
• The total amount of money for congressionally directed spending items will be capped at no more than one percent of fiscal year 2024 discretionary appropriations.
• Congressionally directed spending items are subject to Government Accountability Office audits.

Congressionally directed spending items are defined in Senate Rule XLIV:

“[T]he term ‘congressionally directed spending item’ means a provision or report language included primarily at the request of a Senator providing, authorizing, or recommending a specific amount of discretionary budget authority, credit authority, or other spending authority for a contract, loan, loan guarantee, grant, loan authority, or other expenditure with or to an entity, or targeted to a specific State, locality or Congressional district, other than through a statutory or administrative formula-driven or competitive award process[.]”

Deadline

For fiscal year 2024 appropriations, forms must be submitted by 5:00 p.m. HST (10:00 p.m. EST) Thursday, February 23, 2023.  Forms submitted after the deadline will be considered on a rolling basis when possible.  If you have not submitted a request in previous years, we recommend that you contact a member of Senator Schatz’s legislative staff well in advance of submitting your form.  Please contact Schatz_Appropriations@schatz.senate.gov to be connected with the appropriate legislative staffer.

Form

Please sign in at left to fill out a form for an appropriations request.  The application’s name must be unique and cannot be edited.