The White House has published a memorandum outlining the FY22 Research and Development priorities for federal agencies. AI and QIS remain a top priority, however due to COVID-19, significant focus has been placed on public health concerns including vaccine development and infectious disease research. Other areas of interest include energy, space, and security.
Read the full memo here.
Earlier today, the House finished debate on and passed the second “minibus” of FY2021 spending bills. The passage of H. R. 7617, which is made up of six bills, leaves two bills for further action, Homeland Security and Legislative Branch.
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.
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.
As expected, the House cleared its first package of FY2021 spending bills earlier this afternoon. The four-bill batch, H. R. 7608, combines four separate pieces of legislation: State-Foreign Operations; Agriculture; Interior and Environment; and Military Construction- Veterans Affairs. It was adopted by a vote of 224 to 189. A summary of H. R. 7608 is available here.
Next week, the House is currently scheduled to take up a second “minibus”, made up of seven appropriations bills: Defense; Labor-HHS-Education; Commerce-Justice-Science; Homeland Security; Financial Services-General Government; Energy and Water; and Transportation-HUD. That would leave the Legislative Branch measure as the only one of the 12 that will not have been taken up by the full chamber by the end of next week.
On the other side of the Hill, the Senate has yet to act on any of its bills, and with negotiations around the next COVID-relief bill expected to take up all of the time before the August recess, it is not expected do so until September at the earliest.