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Agreement Reached on Labor-Health-Education and Defense Package

House and Senate conferees yesterday officially agreed to a massive spending package for FY2019 that combines the two biggest annual appropriations bills, the Labor-HHS-Education and Defense measures.  The explanatory statement for the conference report is available here.  The text of the conference report is also available on-line here.

The Senate could take up the $855-billion package, which represents approximately 65 percent of all discretionary spending for FY2019, next week with the House following suit the following week.  The current plan is to add a short-term continuing resolution to this bill that would fund other agencies and programs whose spending bills haven’t been passed by the October 1 deadline through December 7.

Here are some of the details with respect to the Labor-HHS-Education component of the bill:

Biomedical and health

  • National Institutes of Health (NIH):  $39.1 billion, an increase of $2 billion over current level
  • Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA):  $7.16 billion, an increase of $146.8 million
  • Nursing programs:  level-funded at $249.5 million

Student aid and higher education

  • Pell Grant:  maximum grant of $6,195 ($100 increase)
  • Title VI international programs:  level-funded at $72.6 million
  • Federal Work-Study:  level-funded at $1.13 billion
  • SEOG:  level-funded at $840 million
  • TRIO:  $1.06 billion, an increase of $50 million
  • GEAR UP:  $360 million, an increase of $10 million

A summary of the Labor-HHS-Education part of the agreement is available here.

Office of Federal Relations will provide additional details, including those about the defense part of the bill, throughout the day.