As the Trump administration pushes Congress to streamline how the federal government confronts forest fires, a nagging question is beginning to brew: Where will the money to fight them come from?
A deal lawmakers struck in 2018 to manage the rising cost of fire suppression runs out after 2027, and lawmakers haven’t agreed on how or when to extend it.
The soon-to-expire arrangement was an off-budget disaster fund that kicks in when regular appropriations for fire suppression are exhausted. The fund, which grows each year, is set at a combined $2.9 billion for the Forest Service and Interior Department for fiscal 2026.
The deal, reached after a few years of negotiations, spared the Forest Service from raiding non-fire-related accounts to pay for fire suppression — a practice called “fire borrowing” that had siphoned billions of dollars since 2002.
