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Category: Federal Agency Developments

House Pulls FY16 Interior Bill

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The House has pulled their FY16 Interior Appropriations bill amid controversy of a Confederate flag amendment. The House has previously considered and passed three amendments restricting funding for federal lands displaying the Confederate flag. Due to Republican concerns these restrictions might impose, an additional amendment was proposed to allow funding on federally owned park land displaying the Confederate flag. The crux of the issue: Civil War battle fields, the bulk of which are now federal park land and have memorials and cemeteries headstones with the flag on them. The bill did not have the votes to pass the House without the new amendment that allowed display of the Confederate flag on federal lands in some instances. Further, it was unclear that the bill had the votes to pass if the amendment was not included.

The bill was first considered but not finished before the July 4th Recess. It is unclear how the bill will or can move forward.

House to Consider FY16 Interior Bill

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The House is expected to consider their FY16 Interior-Enviornment Appropriations bill for the bulk of this week. The $30.2 billion Interior-Environment spending bill will take center stage as the House is scheduled to consider the controversial measure on the Floor, possibly for long hours with many amendments.

The typically contentions bill is particularly so this year because of impacts to environmental policy priorities for the Administration. The bill would bar the Obama administration from implementing its final Clean Water Act rule defining the scope of the government’s regulatory authority under the law. It would keep the Bureau of Land Management from enforcing its hydraulic fracturing regulations on public lands in states that have their own rules governing those operations. Similarly, it would preclude the EPA from imposing a federal plan on states that do not submit their own strategies to implement the agency’s greenhouse gas limits for existing power plants, known as the Clean Power Plan. It contains several policy riders that would block Obama administration initiatives including endangered species protections and climate change regulations.

While the Administration has yet to issue a veto threat against the legislation, it would not be unexpected given the proposed cuts and policy riders.

ED Accepting Applications for Fulbright-Hays

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The 2015 grant competition for the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Grant Program (DDRA) has begun! DDRA provides grants to colleges and universities to fund individual doctoral students who conduct research in other countries, in modern foreign languages and area studies for periods of six to 12 months.

Who may apply:

  • Institutions of Higher Education
  • Graduate students in doctoral programs in the fields of foreign languages and area studies must apply through the institutions in which they are enrolled.

A student is eligible to receive a fellowship if s/he:

  • Is a citizen or national of the United States or is a permanent resident of the United States;
  • Is a graduate student in good standing at an institution of higher education in the United States who, when the fellowship begins, is admitted to candidacy in a doctoral program in modern foreign languages and area studies at that institution;
  • Is planning a teaching career in the United States upon graduation; and
  • Possesses adequate skills in the language(s) necessary to carry out the dissertation project.

For more information and to apply please go to the Office of Postsecondary Education’s website: http://www2.ed.gov/programs/iegpsddrap/applicant.html

 

Two Things We Learned this Week

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1. Republicans are on a collision course over DoD spending: The long-brewing squabble between GOP defense hawks and fiscal hawks over defense spending is coming to a head, with the House Budget Committee planning to move a budget resolution that sets base defense spending next fiscal year $35 billion below what the Pentagon requested. But the defense hawks are lobbying furiously to avoid that outcome, and Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain (R-AZ) is even vowing to personally oppose a budget resolution that doesn’t increase military spending above what’s allowed under the Budget Control Act of 2011. Sequester? What sequester?

And on the House side, Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-TX) is asking the House Budget Committee to boost defense spending, which would bust the BCA caps by more than $50 billion. In a letter he plans to send to the Budget panel today, Thornberry will seek $577 billion in defense spending for the House’s budget resolution and argue that “the lowest acceptable level is $566 billion, the amount identified for 2016 in last year’s House budget,” the aide said.

Thornberry’s request of $577 billion is the amount that was projected for the Pentagon in FY2016 before the 2011 Budget Control Act was approved and sequestration took effect. It’s higher than President Barack Obama’s FY2016 request of $561 billion, which includes base Pentagon funding as well as other spending considered part of the “national security” budget. The GOP aide said that Thornberry’s letter is signed by 31 of the 36 Republicans on the Armed Services panel.

2. Government shutdowns are still a thing: Shortly after the November midterm elections that gave Republicans control of the Senate, then-incoming Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, “We will not be shutting the government down.” Now here we are, just three months later – with the Department of Homeland Security set to run out of funds at midnight. And House and Senate leaders remain at an impasse over whether to pass a “clean” DHS spending bill or continue pushing to tie DHS funding to the president’s executive order on immigration. 

House leaders are now looking at staving off a shutdown by passing a three-week continuing spending resolution for DHS. Read more here.

Source: Politico

New Plan for Homeland Security Appropriations Bill

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For the fourth time, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was unable evening to call up a $39.7 billion House-passed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spending bill on Monday evening amid united Democratic opposition to provisions blocking recent executive action on immigration riders.

Following the failure, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell moved to consider a standalone bill narrowly targeting the President’s 2014 Executive Order and sparing the Administration’s 2012 action aimed only at certain young immigrants. It’s the Republican leader’s first step in trying to disentangle the immigration fight from a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security.

At present, it looks like the the Senate may have no choice now but to fund the agency on a short-term basis. The move towards disentanglement is designed to sway a small number of Democratic Senators towards moving the bill, while also avoiding a shut down of the security agency. Further, it avoids a shutdown of the agency and the political blame that the Republicans would face (and fear similar to what happened with the last shut down) if DHS is shut down.

If funding does lapse, there would be 30,000 furloughs while approximately 75 to 80 percent of DHS employees would have to work without pay. Historically, Congress has given essential workers back pay for the duration of a funding lapse, but such funding is certainly not guaranteed. DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson warned Congress that a stopgap measure would also have consequences, including delayed improvements to border security and delayed state and local aid.

The continuing resolution funding for DHS expires on Friday.