Meanwhile, the FY2021 Appropriations Bills Move Along

Posted on July 30, 2020

While most of the public’s attention is focused on the difficult negotiations that may or may not be taking placing on the next COVID relief package, the clock continues to count down to the start of FY2021.

The House is working to adopt a second “minibus” of spending bills before this weekend. Instead of taking up a seven-bill package as originally planned, the chamber is now considering one made up of six pieces, having removed the almost-always-controversial Homeland Security measure from the minibus. More than 300 amendments are expected to be debated before a vote to adopt the legislation.

This week’s package is made up of: Commerce-Justice-Science; Defense; Energy and Water; Labor-HHS-Education; Financial Services-General Government; and Transportation-HUD bills. Last week, the House cleared the Agriculture, Interior, State-Foreign Operations, and VA-Military Construction measures. This leaves the Homeland Security and Legislative Branch bills for future consideration.

The Senate still has yet to produce any of the 12 bills.

Will We See More Appropriations and Senate “COVID 4.0” This Week?

Posted on July 27, 2020

After adopting a four-bill spending package for FY2021 last week, the House is currently scheduled to take up an even larger seven-bill “minibus” later this week, H.R. 7617.The legislation combines the FY2021 Defense, Commerce-Justice-Science, Energy and Water Development, Labor-HHS-Education, Financial Services-General Government, Homeland Security, and Transportation-HUD measures. As we noted last week, the Senate has yet to move on even a single spending bill.

Meanwhile, over the on the Senate side of the Capitol, we may finally see this week a set of proposals that represents the Senate Republican wish list for a “COVID 4.0” relief package. The Senate Republican leadership had hoped to unveil something last week but could not work out differences among themselves and with the White House. The goal is to unveil a proposal this week so that they can start negotiating with the Democratic House, which passed the the HEROES Act in May as its marker for negotiations. There is pressure to act as quickly as possible as a number of benefits from the CARES Act are scheduled to expire very soon, including expanded unemployment benefits.

Spending Bills Move to the House Floor

Posted on July 21, 2020

After a flurry of activities in subcommittee and full committee the last two weeks, the vast majority of FY2021 spending bills is scheduled to move to the House floor this week and next for consideration by the full chamber. Rather than considering them individually, the bills will be grouped into two different “minibus” legislative packages.

The first grouping of bills, H.R 7608, is made up of four pieces of legislation and it is slated for consideration later this week: State-Foreign Operations; Agriculture; Interior; and, Military Construction-Veterans Affairs. A summary of the package, prepared by the House Democratic staff, is available here.

The second batch, H.R. 7617, is currently scheduled for floor action next week. This second minibus pulls together seven of the eight remaining spending measures: Defense; Commerce-Justice-Science; Energy and Water; Financial Services; Homeland Security; Labor-HHS-Education; and, Transportation-Housing. A summary of the different parts of the large bill is available here.

Should these packages pass, only the Legislative Branch would remain unapproved in the House by the end of next week.

House Appropriations Process Marches On

Posted on July 13, 2020

The FY2021 appropriations process continues to march on in the House, for now, with two more bills slated for committee action today. This afternoon, the Appropriations Committee is scheduled to take up the Labor-HHS-Education and Energy and Water Development bills.

Labor-HHS-Education

As part of the overall level of $47 billion for NIH, the Labor-HHS-Education bill would fund:

HIV/AIDS Research at $3.1 billion
Alzheimer’s research at $2.9 billion

In addition, AHRQ would be funded at $343 million

Health Resources and Service Administration (HRSA) Title VII health professions and Title VIII nursing programs would be funded at $512.5 million and $270.0 million, respectively.

The Labor-HHS report also includes the following language with respect to the reporting of foreign gifts that meet certain criteria:

Disclosure of Foreign Gifts and Contracts.—The Committee reminds colleges and universities receiving Federal funds that section 117 of the HEA requires institutions to disclose certain gifts from or contracts with foreign entities and that the Department makes such information publicly available on its website. The Committee directs the Department to work with institutions to improve the reporting process. Disclosure requirements increase transparency and help protect our national security and academic integrity.

In addition to the funding levels for the programs we reported on last week, the House bill would also fund Title VI International Education programs at $80.3 million (an increase of $4.2 million), GAANN at $24.0 million (an increase of $1 million), and the Institute of Education Sciences at $630.5 million (an increase of $7 million).

Energy and Water

The Energy and Water Development bill under consideration today calls for $2.85 billion for the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EER&E) programs, an increase of $58 million. Within EER&E, renewable energy programs would see a cut of $4 million and would be supported at $638 million.

The bill calls for ARPA-E to be funded at $1.02 billion, which represents an increase of $35 million.

The Office of Science would see $7.05 billion under this bill, an increase of $50 million. Following programs within Science would be funded in the following manner:

Advanced Scientific Computing– $1.02 billion (+$35 million)
Basic Energy Sciences– $2.24 billion (+$29 million)
Biological and Environmental Research– $760 million (+$10 million)
Fusion– $680 million (+$9 million)
High Energy Physics– $1.08 billion (+$5 million)
Nuclear Physics– $715 million (+$2 million)

FY2021 Appropriations Bills Finally Moving

Posted on July 8, 2020

With schedules and logistics thrown into complete disarray by COVID-19, progress on the FY2021 spending bills had been stalled. The logjam has been partially broken, at least for now, in the House, with all 12 bills scheduled for markup this week.

Office of Federal Relations will provide additional details as they become available. The following are some of the highlights of several different bills so far:

Labor-HHS-Education

National Institutes of Health

$47 billion total, an increase of $5.5 billion above current level ($5 billion of the increase is emergency appropriations, meaning the regular appropriation for the agency is $42 billion)

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

$343 million, an increase of $500 million

Student Aid

Pell Grant Maximum: $6,945, an increase of $150
SEOG: $880 M ($15-million increase)
Federal Work Study: $1.2 billion ($30-million increase)
GEAR UP: $1.1 billion (an increase of $5 million)

The legislation would also prohibit the Department of Education from implementing its new Title IX regulations.

The text of the bill is available here and a summary of the bill prepared by the committee staff is available here. The report accompanying the bill, which contains most of the detailed breakdown of funding, is not yet available.

Commerce-Justice-Science

National Science Foundation

Under the bill unveiled earlier today, NSF would be funded at $8.55 billion, an increase of $270 million. Within NSF:

Research and Related Activities Directorate would be funded at $6.97 billion (an increase of $229.9 million
Education and Human Resources would be funded at $970 million (an increase of $30 million.

NASA

NASA would be flat-funded at $22.63 billion in the bill. The bill proposes to divide up the funding, in part, in the following manner:

Science: $7.1 billion (a decrease of $42 million)
Aeronautics: $819 million (an increase of $35 million)
Space Tech: $1.1 billion (level funded)
Space Grant: $50 million (an increase of $2 million)

NOAA

The bill would fund NOAA at $5.45 billion, an increase of $101.9 million.

This is the text of the bill and a summary is available here.

Interior

The current version of the House bill contains $36.76 billion in regular appropriations, an increase of $771 million, and $15 billion in emergency appropriations.

While we have not yet seen further breakdowns for the agency, the USGS is slated to receive an increase of $22 million under this bill.

Both the NEH and the NEA would each be funded at $170 million, an increase of $7.5 million.

The bill text is available here and the summary of the bill is available here.

Energy and Water

Under the the subcommittee-approved bill, the Department of Energy Office of Science would see an increase of $50 million and would be funded at $7.05 billion.

ARPA-E would see an increase of $10 million, while the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy program.would be funded at $2.85 billion, an increase of $58 million.

The summary for the bill is available here.

Full Committee

The full Appropriations Committee is slated to take up the Interior bill on Friday and is scheduled to mark up both the Labor-HHS-Education and Energy and Water bills next Monday.

We will provide further details as they become available.