House Appropriations Committee Republicans released their draft FY16 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Labor (Labor-H) spending plan earlier today, and Democrats are already protesting the proposal and calling for an end to the budget caps. The House Appropriations Labor-H Subcommittee is expected to consider and pass the measure tomorrow.
The Labor-H bill may be the one of the most delicate and contentious appropriations bills considered by the House and the Senate this year because of the hot-button, politically-contentious policies, and well-known agencies funded through the bill. For context, the bill funds a diverse amount of well-known agencies, including :
- National Institutes of Health
- Centers for Disease Control
- Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
- Department of Education
- National Labor Relations Board
- Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Despite the Congressional Republicans’ goal of moving all 12 appropriations measures this year, there are strong doubts that even GOP control of both chambers can get Congress back in the habit of considering it beyond an omnibus spending package. To wit, neither the House or Senate released a draft Labor-H bill in FY2015, and only the Senate acted in FY2014. The bill contains programs on health spending, including Obamacare policy riders, education spending, including student loan provisions and riders, Department of Labor programs and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Overall
The draft bill would provide a total of $153 billion in new discretionary funding, $3.7 billion less than the current level and $14.6 billion less than the President’s Budget Request. It would provide $31.2 billion for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an increase of $1.1 billion from the current level and $100 million more than the President sought. Lawmakers in both parties have expressed a desire to boost funding for NIH, but they are limited by laws that keep overall FY16 discretionary funding at 2015 enacted levels.
Health-Related Funding
Within the NIH funding, the legislation includes $165 million to support activities for the National Children’s Study, $480.6 million for Clinical and Translational Sciences Awards, and $311.8 million for Institutional Development Awards (IDeA) programs. The bill also provides increases for several targeted research initiatives, including $886 million, a $300 million increase, for an Alzheimer’s disease research initiative; $461 million, a $100 million increase, for an antibiotic resistance initiative; $150 million, a $95 million increase, for the Brain Research through Application of Innovative Neuro-technologies (BRAIN) initiative; and the full $200 million requested for the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI).
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which has been at the forefront of efforts to contain the Ebola virus in Africa and keep Americans from abusing narcotics including painkillers, would get $7 billion. That’s a $140 million increase from the current year and equal to the President’s Budget Request. This includes $70 million to combat prescription drug abuse, an increase of $50 million from the current level. While we do not yet know how much funding is included for specific programs – like the Education Research Centers, Agriculture and Fishery Centers, and Health Prevention Research Centers – the House bill does include $341.1 million for NIOSH, which is about $6.2 million more than was included in the FY2015 omnibus.
Beyond the bipartisan increases for CDC and NIH, the draft bill contains provisions that are sure to induce partisan debates. The Labor Department would get $11.7 billion, $206 million less than current funding and $1.4 billion less than Obama requested. The Education Department would get $64.4 billion, $2.8 billion less than current funding and $6.4 billion less than requested.
Also on the ‘bad news’ front, the proposal would terminate the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The bill also includes several policy provisions, including prohibitions on the Department of Education from moving forward with regulations to establish a college ratings system, place new requirements on teacher preparation, define “gainful employment” and “credit hour,” and dictate how states must license institutions of higher education.
Policy riders include a provision ensuring any new HHS Dietary Guidelines focus only on food and nutrients and have a sound scientific evidence base and several provisions to protect life, including continuations of all longstanding restrictions on abortion funding that have been included in the legislation in prior years. The legislation also includes the text of Congresswoman Diane Black’s (R-TN) HR 940, the Health Care Conscience Rights Act.
Education-Related Funding
House Approriators allocated $64.4 billion in discretionary funds for the Education Department, about $6.4 billion below the Administration’s request.The bill eliminates 19 duplicative, ineffective or unauthorized education programs and cuts several other “lower-priority” programs.
For elementary education, the measure would fund grants for states to support children with special needs, known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), at $12 billion, about $500 million more than the 2015 level and $1 billion greater than the President’s request. Funding for Head Start would increase by roughly $300 million to $8.8 billion. The President requested an additional $1.5 billion for Head Start programs to lengthen both the school day and school year. The program currently receives $8.5 billion, which appropriators boosted significantly after they took heat because of slots lost in the program during the sequester, forcing some facilities to shut their doors during the Fall 2013 government shutdown.
In the higher education realm, appropriators proposed raising the maximum Pell Grant award by $85 to $5,915 though a combination of mandatory ($1,055) and discretionary funds ($4,860). Perkins was provided $1.7 billion total, an increase of $600 million, the program has remained at $1.117 billion since FY 2014.
funding. Most interestingly for higher education, there are a number of potentially contentions policy riders which prevent the Education Department from moving forward with regulations to establish the Administration’s college rating system (Postsecondary Institution Ratings System), place new requirements on teacher preparation, change the definitions of gainful employment and credit hour, and tell states how to license institutions of higher education.
Other Provisions
The bill provides an advance appropriation of $445 million for Corporation for Public Broadcasting for fiscal year 2018, which is the same level of advance funding provided in the fiscal year 2015 enacted level and the budget request.
The bill includes $200 million for the National Labor Relations Board – a decrease of $74.2 million (27 percent) below last year’s level and $78 million (28 percent) below the President’s budget request.
Going Forward
The House Appropriations on has not yet scheduled a full committee markup on this proposal nor is it clear when the measure will be considered on the House floor, but that should happen sometime in the next week or two. There are sure to be a lot of amendments debated during the process. We will continue to update this information as the bill advances – but we are still a long way from the finish line on this one.
Read the text of the bill here.