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Broader Higher Education Community Looks to Engage with Federal Government to Address Community-Wide Challenges

Yesterday, the broader higher education community sent to Congress a series of recommendations and requests for assistance aimed at stabilizing the entire enterprise as it tries to cope with COVID-19.  The requests fall into a number of distinct categories:

  • One set of requests addresses the immediate financial challenges facing both students and institutions.
  • Another set of requests focuses on the unique circumstances that research universities face as they deal with trying to mitigate the impact on research.
  • The third set  focuses on tax-related provisions that could assist students, families, and institutions.

The FY2020 Deal

After weeks of negotiations, Congressional leaders released last evening the long-awaited texts of the FY2020 appropriations bills.

As we noted before, the 12 bills were combined into two massive legislative packages.  The first package is the “defense” package and consists of the Defense, Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS), Financial Services-General Government, and Homeland Security measures.  The second “non-defense” package consists of the remaining spending bills—Labor-HHS-Education (LABOR-HHS), Agriculture, Energy and Water, Interior, Legislative Branch, Military Construction, State-Foreign Operations, and Transportation-Housing and Urban Development—and a host of other bills and provisions of policy importance but not directly related to appropriations.

The House is expected to vote and pass the measures today, and the Senate is expected to pass both measures by Thursday, prior to the Continuing Resolution expiring.

The President is expected to sign the measures.

We will provide additional details throughout the week.  Here is an initial breakdown of how various agencies and programs would fare in FY2020 under this package of bills. This post will be updated.

LABOR-HHS

National Institutes of Health

  • Overall: $41.7 billion (including $492 million from 21st Century Cures Act)—increase of $2.6 billion
    • $2.8 billion for Alzheimer’s research
    • $3.1 billion for HIV/AIDS research
    • $500 million for Precision Medicine
    • $500 million for BRAIN Initiative
    • $195 million for Cancer Moonshot
  • Fogerty: $80.76 million and increase of $2.65 million

HRSA

  • Title VII Health Professions and Title VIII Nursing workforce development programs receive  $684.5 million — a $42.8 million (7%) increase.
    • The legislation includes first-time funding for the Loan Repayment Program for Substance Use Disorder Treatment Work and Mental and Substance Use Disorder Workforce Training Demonstrations within the Behavioral Health Workforce Education and Training program

CDC

  • Overall:  $8 billion – increase of $636 million
  • NIOSH: $342 million– increase of $6.5 million

Other HHS items of note:

  • The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Trust Fund, which funds the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), is reauthorized through FY2029.
  • Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is level funded at $338 million.
  • The Administration is prohibited from lowering F&A rates.
  • NIH salary caps remain at Executive Level II.
  • $25 million for gun research. Out of the $25 million set aside, $12.5 will be from the CDC and the other $12.5 will come from the NIH. The Dickey amendment language remains in place and CDC cannot use the funding to lobby in favor of gun control.
  • Delay scheduled Medicaid DSH allotment reductions through May 22, 2020

Department of Education

  • Pell Grants: maximum award of $6,345 – increase of $150
  • SEOG: $865 million – increase of $25 million
  • Federal work study: $1.18 billion – increase of $50 million
  • TRIO: $1.09 billion – increase of $30 million
  • GEAR-UP: $365 million – increase of $5 million
  • GAANN: $23 million – level funded
  • Institute for Education Sciences: $623.5 million – increase of $8 million
  • International Education/ Title VI programs: $76.1 million – increase of $4 million

Also, the measure would require the Department of Education to brief Congress on how they are administering of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness and Temporary Extended Public Loan Forgiveness programs.

Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS): $252 million — increase of $10 million

CJS

National Science Foundation

  • Overall: $8.278 billion – increase of $203 million
  • Research and Related Activities: $6.737 billion – increase of $217 million
  • Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction: $243.23 million – decrease of $52.5 million
  • Education and Human Resources: $940.0 million – increase of $30 million

NASA

  • Overall: $22.63 billion – an increase of$1.13 billion
  • Space Grant: $48.0 million – increase of $4 million

NOAA

  • Overall: 3.76 billion – increase of $167 million
  • NOAA Climate Research: $169.5 million – increase of $10.5 million
    • Climate Research Cooperative Institutes: $66.5 M – increase of $5.5 million
  • Integrated Ocean Observing System Regional Operations: $39.5 million—increase of $0.5 million
  • Sea Grant: $87 million total, including Aquaculture – increase of $6 million
    • Aquaculture: $13 million – increase of $1 million

 

INTERIOR

  • Overall: $13.5 billion – increase of $545 million
  • USGS (part of Interior):  $1.27 billion increase – of $110.4 million 
  • Climate Adaptation Science Centers: $38.3 million – increase of $13.0 million
  • Cooperative Research Units: $24 million – increase of $5.5 million
  • ShakeAlert Earthquake Early Warning: $19 million – increase of $2.9 million, plus an additional $6.7 million for infrastructure
  • EPA: $9.06 billion  – increase of $208 million
  • EPA Science: $716.4 million
    • EPA Science to Achieve Results (STAR) grant program: $6 million
    • $6 million for Harmful Algal blooms
  • National Endowment for the Arts: $162.25 million – increase of $7.25 million
  • National Endowment for the Humanities: 162.25 million – increase of $7.25 million

 

ENERGY

  • Overall: $38.586 billion – increase of $2.9 billion
  • Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy: $425 million – increase of $59 million
  • Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy: $2.79 billion – increase of $411 million
  • Office of Science: $7 billion – increase of $415 million
    • $71 million for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning across the six Office of Science programs
    • $195 million for Quantum Information Sciences including
      • $120 million to carry out a basic research program on quantum information science
      • $75 million for the establishment of up to five National Quantum Information Science Research Centers
  • Fusion Energy Sciences Research: $414 million — reduction from $432 million

 

Other Items of Note:

  • Repeal of the parking tax: The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) tax on employer provided parking and transportation benefits as unrelated business income.
  • Repeal of the “kiddie” tax: (taxing nonqualified scholarship amounts for minors at the higher, trust rate rather than nominal tax rate).  This glitch in TCJA caused a child’s unearned income over $2,100 to subsequently be taxed at the trusts and estates rate instead of their parents’ top marginal tax rate, including taxable scholarship amounts.
  • Retroactive reinstatement and extension of the above-the-line tuition deduction, which expired at the end of 2017.  The bill reinstates the deduction from 12/31/2017 until 12/31/2020.

Pres. Trump to Deliver SOTU Tomorrow

In an address before Congress tomorrow, President Trump is scheduled to deliver his first official State of the Union speech.  In his remarks, he expected to raise, among other issues, immigration, infrastructure, and the economy.

The Administration released its framework on immigration last week.  A document that is purported to be a leaked copy of the Administration’s thinking on infrastructure has also made the rounds.

Shut Down Likely

At midnight tonight, the Continuing Resolution passed in December 2017 will expire. Presently, it does not look like Congress will be able to agree on a short or long term funding solution, and a shutdown is highly likely.

Agencies are circulating memos advising staff how to proceed in the high likelihood there is a shutdown and nonessential federal employees will be furloughed without pay.

OMB has just released a memorandum – Planning for Agency Operations during a Potential Lapse in Appropriations – that includes FAQs regarding grants and contracts (Section II, pages 3-9).

The University of Washington leadership has developed information as to impacts of a shutdown, which will occur in three major areas: research funding, student aid, and Medicare and Medicaid payments. Those impacts can be found here. 

If the federal government does shut down, significant impacts will not be immediately felt by the UW community. Initial impacts will be felt by those in the research community needing to communicate with the federal enterprise such as researchers needing engagement or approval from program managers or researchers applying for grants.  Impacts will be magnified if a shut down is prolonged and goes for multiple weeks.

The University does a plan in place to have adequate cash on hand from existing accounts to cover anticipated expenditures in the event of delayed federal reimbursement. We estimate that we could go at least one month, possibly more, before layoffs or contract suspensions would be initiated.

To follow developments on budget negotiations minute to minute, the Washington Post is counting down the time to midnight.

The Federal Relations team is continuing to monitor the situation and will continue to provide updates.

Funding Crisis Averted, Tax Bill is Signed Today

both chambers of Congress passed yet another FY2018 continuing resolution this evening, the House by a vote of 231-188 and the Senate by a vote of 66-32.  This most recent CR would keep the government running through 19 January, and has been sent to the president for his signature, just a day before the current CR is set to expire.

To avoid a Christmas shutdown, the  the House released the text of a short-term Continuing Resolution (CR) that funds the federal government through January 19, 2018 late Wednesday night.   Conservatives and defense hawks wanted a full Pentagon budget adopted, the measure was certain to be rejected in the Senate, where Democrats were poised to block it. However, the House leadership concession to defense hawks the CR would add $4 billion for missile defense and $700 million to repair damaged Navy ships.

The measure also would include some temporary extensions for the Children’s Health Insurance Program until March 31, the National Flood Insurance Program, and an extension of the Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act until January 19.

Of final note, the CR includes language to waive the $125 billion in statutory automatic “PAYGO” cuts that would otherwise be triggered because of the $1.5 trillion cost of the tax bill which Congress passed earlier this week.

The House and Senate have adjourned until the new year.

Meanwhile, with the PAYGO provisions waived, the White House will have a signing ceremony for the tax bill passed earlier this week.