Appropriations Requests

As a member of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Schatz advocates for funding priorities through the congressional appropriations process. Senator Schatz invites your input to develop these priorities by submitting your requests through his website. There are two types of requests (1) earmarks and (2) programmatic. These requests can be submitted to the Office of Senator Schatz through the following applications:

Earmarks—formally referred to as “congressionally directed spending” (CDS)—allow members of Congress to provide a one-time award of federal funding for specific projects, without having to go through a typical grant process.  Only nonprofits and state/county government agencies are eligible for earmarks.

You can view Senator Schatz’s FY 26 earmark requests here.

Programmatic funds cover a broad range of spending, from funding for federal agencies to do their jobs, to funding to help people, businesses, and other organizations through competitive grants, formula grants, or loan programs.

For more background on programmatic requests, please click here.

If you have not submitted a request in previous years, we recommend that you contact a member of Senator Schatz’s legislative staff to learn more about the process. Please contact Schatz_Appropriations@schatz.senate.gov to be connected with the appropriate staffer. Alternatively, a contact list for our office can be found here.  In your initial email, please include a brief description of your project or the Hawai‘i impacts of the federal program you are interested in.

Constituents wishing to express their thoughts on federal appropriations can do so here.