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Category: Appropriations

Additional Information About FY2020 Budget Proposal Available

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Additional details about the President’s FY2020 budget requests for various agencies are becoming available.  In the bigger picture, this additional level of information is not as detailed as what we expect to see later this spring.

For example, the top line USGS budget document shows that the Administration proposes to eliminate the Cooperative Research Unit program while seeking to move and reorganize the Climate Adaptation Science Centers.  It also calls for the Earthquake Early Warning system to be funded at $8.2 million.

The research budget proposal from the Pentagon, the “R-1,” seeks to reduce funding for DoD basic research by 11.4 percent and DoD science and technology by 11.9 percent compared to FY2019 levels.

NASA would see a cut of about $500 million below the enacted FY2019 level.  Within the larger NASA Administration proposal, Space Grant and WFIRST would both be eliminated.  See here, and here.  Space News also takes a look at the NASA budget request.

Office of Federal Relations will continue to provide additional details.

 

President’s FY2020 Budget

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Today, the Administration released its FY 2020 President’s budget request (PBR) to Congress. This budget is the first step in the annual Congressional appropriations cycle. The annual PBR is a political and policy document indicative of the goals of the  Administration for the coming year.

The $4.7 trillion FY 2020 budget released today would sharply reduce spending on safety-net programs, while effectively exempting the Pentagon from strict spending caps set to take effect in FY 2020.

The PBR assumes the scheduled FY 2020 and 2021 sequester cuts to domestic spending, which is effectively a 10 percent reduction to nondefense programs from current levels. The budget would reduce the overall level of nondefense spending by nearly $30 billion reduction and would increase military spending by 5 percent, to $750 billion from $716 billion received in FY 2019. It requests $8.6 billion for new barriers along the southern U.S. border, including $5 billion for the Department of Homeland Security and $3.6 billion for the Defense Department’s military-construction budget. The president’s blueprint would also provide additional funding to boost manpower at Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, and it proposes policy changes to end so-called sanctuary cities.

The Administration’s budget proposed $2.7 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade of which $1.9 trillion is cuts to mandatory spending programs.  Specifically within those programs, the Administration proposes to cut $22 billion from safety-net programs next year—$327 billion over the next decade—and proposes new work requirements for recipients of food stamps, Medicaid, and federal housing programs.

Within the discretionary nondefense side of the ledger, cuts were proposed to:

  • $87.1 billion for HHS (a 12 percent cut)
  • $34.36 billion for NIH (a 12 percent or $4.9 billion cut)
  • $5.8 billion for HRSA (a $1 billion cut)
  • $5.27 billion for CDC (a $1.2 billion cut)
  • $31.7 billion for Energy, (an 11 percent cut) and requests $5.5 billion for Office of Science (a 9 percent decrease) while eliminating Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E)
  • $62.0 billion for ED (an $8.5 billion or 12 percent cut) and eliminating, Public Service Loan Forgiveness, Supporting Effective Instruction State Grants, 21st Century Community Learning Centers, and Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants
  • $12.2 billion for Commerce (a $1.0 billion or a 9.3-percent increase), but eliminations to the  Sea Grant, Coastal Zone Management Grants, and the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund.
  • $12.5 billion for Interior (a 14 percent cut)
  • $7.1 billion for NSF (a 9 percent cut)
  • $21 billion for NASA (a 1.4 percent increase)

The budget specifics for HHS, ED, Energy, DOD, Interior, NOAA, and NASA should be forthcoming this week.

Other items included in the budget, the PBR proposes to streamline student loan repayment by consolidating multiple IDR plans into a single plan. The Single IDR plan would cap a borrower’s monthly payment at 12.5 percent of discretionary income. For undergraduate borrowers, any balance remaining after 180 months of repayment would be forgiven. For borrowers with any graduate debt, any balance remaining after 30 years of repayment would be forgiven.  It would expand Pell Grant eligibility to include high-quality short-term programs. The budget proposes to restructure and streamline the TRIO and GEAR UP programs by consolidating them into a $950 million State formula grant.

NIH would continue to address the opioid epidemic, make progress on developing a universal flu vaccine, and support the next generation of researchers. The PBR includes a new, dedicated effort to support research and develop new treatments for childhood cancer. Cancer is the leading cause of death from disease among children and adolescents in the United States. The basic biology of childhood cancers is not fully understood and differs from that of adult cancers. The Budget includes increased funding and an innovative initiative to enable the Nation’s best researchers and doctors to learn from every child with cancer, providing the opportunity to comprehend finally the unique causes and the best cures for childhood cancer.

 

 

And here comes the NEXT Spending Battle

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Although the FY2019 spending situation has finally been resolved, another potentially protracted spending fight is already underway.  Without an agreement to lift the statutory limits on how much the government can spend during FY2020, the federal government is looking at a very steep fiscal cliff and significant automatic cuts.

In 2011, House and Senate negotiators came up with, and the Obama Administration agreed to, a plan that was considered so potentially draconian that no one thought that parts of the plan would ever be allowed to come to fruition.  The overarching goal of the plan was to cut mandatory spending.  The intent was to force cuts in mandatory spending by imposing automatic cuts (or popularly called “sequesters”) to the discretionary part of the budget– both defense and non-defense– with statutory cuts placed on each part of the discretionary budget for 10 years.

The mandatory savings never materialized, and over the last eight years, sequesters have been avoided only as a result of two-year deals that raised the spending limits imposed on both defense and non-defense discretionary (“NDD”) programs.  The last deal that lifted the cap applied to FY2018 and FY2019.

All of this means that, for FY2020, without an agreement that lifts the statutory limit on discretionary programs, we are facing a mandatory cut of $126 billion below FY2019 levels.  As a result of the 2011 agreement, discretionary defense programs would be subject to a cut of $71 billion while the domestic agencies and programs funded through discretionary funds– such as NIH and NSF– would be forced to deal with a cut of $55 billion in FY2020.  An agreement must also be reached for FY2021 in order to prevent similar automatic cuts.

Advocacy groups have mobilized to draw Congressional attention to the serious problems surrounding maintaining current spending caps.  Congressional discussions have begun and the situation will take months to resolve.

 

Spending Bill Clears House, Ready To Be Signed

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Following the Senate’s lead, the House cleared last night H.J. Res. 31, the measure that would keep the government funded through the rest of the fiscal year (read the explanatory statement for the legislation here).  The House vote was 300 – 128.

As noted yesterday, after President Trump signs the measure later this morning, he is expected to declare a national emergency in an attempt to find additional sources of funding for a wall along the Southern border.  Multiple court challenges are expected to such a move.

 

Funding Bill Includes Increases

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An initial review of the conference report shows that it contains increases for a number of agencies and accounts of interest to UW.

For example, the bill would fund NSF at $8.075 billion, an increase of $308 million above the FY2018 level. Wtihin NSF, the bill would fund:

  • Research and Related Activities at $6.52 billion
  • Education and Human Resources at $910 million
  • Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction at $295.7 million

With respect to NASA, the bill would appropriate $6.91 billion to the Science Mission Directorate while it would support the Space Technology Directorate at $926.9 million.  The Aeronautics Directorate would receive $725 million under this bill.

 

We will provide additional updates.