Most recently, Congressional Republicans failed to reauthorize the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act in the tax and spending cut megabill they passed in July. Oregon’s senior Democratic U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden co-authored the original Secure Rural Schools Act in 2000 and has tried since November 2024 to reauthorize it with bipartisan Senate support. Mark Haggerty, a senior fellow and researcher at the Center for American Progress who worked on the analysis, said for years the Secure Rural Schools Act had bipartisan support among western lawmakers. Oregon schools have received more than $368 million from the act since 2004, with an average of $9.7 million each year, according to Oregon Department of Education data. This changed in 2023, when Oregon made updates to the distribution model and stopped counting Secure Rural Schools funding as local revenue.