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Category: 2017 UW Federal Agenda

Trump Transition Previews Budget

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Staffers for the Trump transition team have been meeting with career staff at the White House ahead of Friday’s presidential inauguration to outline their plans for shrinking the federal bureaucracy. The proposal takes directly from the Heritage Foundation’s FY 2017 budget blueprint and the Republican Study Committee’s (RSC) FY 2017 Budget Proposal.

While the annual President’s Budget Request is important to set the Administration’s policies and agenda. Congress is ultimately responsible for approving a federal budget and appropriating funds.

The Trump budget, which will not likely be officially unveiled until mid-April, would reduce federal spending by $10.5 trillion over 10 years. The preliminary proposals from the White House budget office will be shared with federal departments and agencies soon after Trump takes the oath of office Friday. Also, Trump’s Cabinet picks have yet to be apprised of the reforms, which would reduce resources within their agencies.

The Commerce and Energy departments would see major reductions in funding, with programs under their jurisdiction either being eliminated or transferred to other agencies. The departments of Transportation, Justice and State would see significant cuts and program eliminations.

The Heritage FY 2017 blueprint, which is reportedly being used as a basis for Trump’s proposed cuts, calls for eliminating several “corporate welfare” programs including:

  • the Minority Business Development Agency,
  • the Economic Development Administration,
  • the International Trade Administration, and
  • the Manufacturing Extension Partnership.

The total savings from cutting these four programs would amount to nearly $900 million in 2017.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be privatized, while the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities would be eliminated entirely.

At the Department of Justice, the blueprint calls for reducing funding for its Civil Rights and its Environment and Natural Resources divisions and eliminating:

  • the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services,
  • Violence Against Women Grants and the Legal Services Corporation.

At the Department of Energy, it would roll back funding for nuclear physics and advanced scientific computing research to 2008 levels, and would eliminate

  • the Office of Electricity,
  • the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and
  • the Office of Fossil Energy, which focuses on technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

At the State Department’s , funding for the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the Paris Climate Change Agreement and the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are candidates for elimination.

Many of the specific cuts were included in the 2017 budget adopted by the conservative RSC, a caucus that represents a majority of House Republicans. It is notable, that the RSC budget plan would reduce federal spending by $8.6 trillion over the next decade.

 

Trump vowed during the campaign not to cut Medicare and Social Security, a pledge that Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, told lawmakers in testimony Wednesday has not changed.

That said, it could be very difficult to reduce U.S. debt without tackling the entitlement programs. Conservative House budgets have repeatedly included reforms to Medicare and Social Security, arguing they are necessary to save the programs.

 

This proposal is expected to be met with strong opposition by Democrats.
The Office of Federal Relations will continue to update on this issue.

Senate Passes Budget with ACA Repeal Instructions

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Early Thursday morning, Senators voted 51-48 to adopt the FY2017 budget resolution, with Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) casting the only Republican vote against it. With just 51 votes, the Senate moves forward with plans to repeal the ACA while avoiding a filibuster from Senate Democrats. Ultimately, the Senate considered 19 amendments before the final vote — and stymied each one, mostly through procedural votes.

The key amendment of the vote-a-rama was an amendment offered by Senator Bob Corker (R-TN), who was joined by other moderate GOP Senators, would delay an initial deadline to write legislation to repeal the 2010 health care law,. The amendment was ultimately withdrawn without a vote.

The Corker Amendment would have pushed back the Jan. 27 deadline for four House and Senate committees to write legislation to repeal the health care law, the sole purpose of the budget resolution under consideration. A vote on the amendment would have been a key indicator of where Senators stood on a growing debate among Republicans about how quickly Congress should repeal the law, especially without a clear replacement ready to go.

The FY 2017 budget resolution includes reconciliation instructions with the purpose of repealing the health care law, which would occur through separate legislation.

 

Welcome to the 115th Congress

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Happy New Year and Happy Swearing In Day! Congress is back today to usher in the 115th Congress and the inauguration is in 17 days.

First things first. 

Both the full House and new members of the Senate were sworn in today initiating the 115th Congress. With the Republican party in charge of both chambers and President-elect Donald Trump in the White House, an ambitious agenda is in the works, which includes repealing Obamacare and rolling back regulations. 

Those effort starts this week as the Senate is expected to start working on passing a budget that contains instructions for gutting Obamacare this week, with the House following up as soon as next week. That resolution includes instructions to repeal large parts of Obamacare through reconciliation. The measure would instruct relevant committees to write legislation that could undo provisions of the law. Republicans are framing this measure as an Obamacare transition solution, but nothing will actually happens to the ACA yet.

The process in the Senate will take several days of debate and there will be a “vote-a-rama,” a process that often takes several hours over the course of a day and night. The budget resolution and the reconciliation measure repealing the health care law avoids the normal Senate requirement of 60 votes to consider legislation. Any subsequent bills addressing replacement provisions for the health care coverage law will require new budget resolution maneuvering or the cooperation from some Senate Democrats. The legislative process for enacting health care coverage replacement legislation could take several years.

Republican leaders are setting up reserve funds in an otherwise bare-bones FY 2017 budget resolution as a way to allow savings from repealing the health care law to be applied to replacement legislation.

The House will vote shortly after on the budget resolution and that vote could happen by the time Trump is inaugurated. It is worth noting that the budget resolution is not law, but binding and instructing on the House and Senate Committees. 

Rollback Regulations

Trump is expected to roll back nearly every major labor regulation enacted under President Barack Obama. Executive orders will be the easiest to reverse or cancel; that simply takes executive action. On the list could be an order that required prospective federal contractors to disclose previous labor law violations when bidding on large contracts. 

The Department of Labor’s appeal of a federal injunction against the rule will almost certainly be dropped once Trump takes charge of the Justice Department. Another regulation to watch is the fiduciary rule, which requires broker dealers to consider only the client’s best interest when providing retirement advice. Trump may face difficulty squelching the rule before it takes effect in April, but his Labor Department can broaden exemptions and thereby weaken its effect substantially.

Also up for review are visas for guest worker programs. Bipartisan support exists already to scrutinize these programs because of highly publicized instances in recent years of mistreatment of guest workers, displacement of native-born workers, or both. Indeed, Democrats may push harder than Republicans to clean this Augean stable, given the reliance of Trump’s own various businesses on guest-worker visas. The Washington Post counts, 500 since 2013.

Trump’s first big decision on immigration will be what to do about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which grants deportation relief to more than 752,000 people brought to the US at a young age. Trump promised during the campaign to end the program, which was created by an Obama executive order. But in December, Trump said “we’re going to work something out that’s going to make people happy and proud.”

Looking Forward

As the Trump Administration takes office later this month, lawmakers are also gearing up for new fights. Efforts to undo many of the Obama Administration’s education policies, such as its teacher preparation regulations or rules aimed at cracking down on for-profit colleges, will likely prove contentious. Lawmakers will also likely clash over efforts to repeal the Obama Administration’s regulations under the Every Student Succeeds Act or scale back the power of the Office for Civil Rights.

Additionally, Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the chairs of the congressional education committees, both plan to turn their attention to overhauling the Higher Education Act, which was last comprehensively reauthorized in 2008.

Decisions over the details for the Trump proposed infrastructure bill, including how to finance it, will probably come after Elaine Chao makes her way through the confirmation process. Trump’s pick for Transportation secretary is unlikely to face much resistance in the Senate.

Multiple Senate Committees will begin public vetting and hearings of dozens of Trump Administration political appointees, from Secretaries, deputies and administrators, all needing Senate confirmation. Hearings have already begun to be scheduled for next week. 

But what will happen next? Stay Tuned. The Office of Federal Relations will continue to update.

COMPETES Reauthorization Heads to President for Signature

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Just moments ago, the House of Representatives passed the American Innovation and Competitiveness Act (S.3084). It was passed under suspension of the rules, during a pro forma session.  The measure passed the Senate on June 22, 2016 by unanimous consent.

For Fiscal Year (FY) 2017, the bill authorizes $7.5 billion for NSF, which is the same level of funding included in the Senate’s FY2017 Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations bill. For FY2018, the bill authorizes a four percent increase in funding for NSF. It’s worth pointing out that this is still tentative and could change. Lastly, it worth pointing out that there is also no directorate-by-directorate level funding for NSF in the bill, and we don’t anticipate there will be any offered at the markup. That is a big difference with the House’s FIRST Act and a big win for the NSF research community, particularly the Social and Behavioral scientists.

Here is a broader summary.

Two Budgets Next Year

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Congress will do two budget resolutions next year. The first will be aimed at the ACA early in the Congress and the second effort at reconciliation will be aimed at tax reform, which should be in the Spring.

The first budget that House and Senate Republicans will unveil early next year will include reconciliation instructions to fast track repeal of the 2010 health law, but is otherwise expected to be relatively bare-bones. the budget resolution is likely to abide by the $1.070 trillion discretionary spending cap that Republican conservatives opposed earlier this year. However, Republican leadership is touting the figure as a placeholder and not to be taken seriously — the real policy choices will be made in the FY2018 budget resolution to be drafted in the spring.

Both House and Senate GOP leaders have signaled that reconciliation, which can not be filibustered in the Senate, is the best path for tax reform. Speaker Paul Ryan is proceeding as if reconciliation would be necessary. This choice means that any tax reform plan would have to be deficit-neutral and would come with an expiration date.

Democrats have said they would be willing to talk about a narrower tax-and-infrastructure deal. But it also seems like it would be difficult for the more comprehensive tax reform approach that McConnell and Ryan talked up to get 60 votes in the Senate.