The FY2019 appropriations process continued to move forward today.
The House agreed to its version of the Defense spending bill by a vote of 359 to 49. The detailed report for the bill is available here.
In the Senate, the full Appropriations Committee adopted its version of the Labor-HHS-Education and Defense spending bills. While most of the details from the two bills are not yet available, the bills’ highlights have been posted by committee here and here.
The Senate Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee reported out this morning its FY2019 bill. While most of the legislation’s details are not yet available, Chairman Roy Blunt (R-MO) highlighted during his remarks the $2-billion increase in the bill slated for NIH. He also called out the proposed Pell Grant maximum of $6,195 and the continuation of the year-round Pell. A press release about the highlights of the bill is available here.
The bill is slated to be taken up by the full Appropriations Committee on Thursday, when the panel will also consider the Defense bill.
More details will be posted as they become available.
As expected, the Senate took up and passed last night its version of the first three-bill “minibus” package by a vote of 86 to 5. The vehicle contains the FY2019 Energy and Water, Military Construction-VA, and Legislative Branch spending bills. With the House having passed the same set of bills earlier this summer, the bills now will proceed to conference.
The Defense spending bill is expected to make its way through the Senate committee process this week, with subcommittee action expected this morning and full committee consideration scheduled for Thursday. Meanwhile, the House committee-approved Defense bill is expected on the House floor later week.
We will continue to provide updates.
The House Appropriations Committee was scheduled to take up today its FY2019 Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Bill. The legislation funds, among other agencies and programs, those that support biomedical research and student financial aid, such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Pell Grants. The committee markup, however, has been postponed until after the July Fourth recess. While Republicans are citing scheduling issues as the cause of the postponement, Democrats are claiming that the delay is due to Republican concerns about amendments that will likely be offered by Democrats to address family separation issues during the markup session.
As it stands, the current version of the legislation, the details of which are available here, would hold the Pell Grant maximum steady at $6,095 while funding the program at $22.475 billion overall. With respect to other financial aid and higher education programs, Work Study would receive $1.13 billion while TRIO and GEAR-UP would be funded at $1.01 billion and $360 million, respectively. SEOG would also bevlevel funded at $840.0 million.
International Education-Title VI programs and the Institute for Education Sciences would be held level at $72.1 million and $613 million, respectively, by the House bill.
On the biomedical research front, NIH would see an increase of $1.25 billion under this bill and would receive $38.33 billion. The Health Resources and Services Administration would receive $6.54 billion under this bill.
On the other side of the Hill, the Senate Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee is scheduled to take up its version of the FY2019 bill later this morning. The full Appropriations Committee is scheduled to mark up the legislation on Thursday, when it is also expected to consider the Defense spending bill. The Office of Federal Relations will report on the details as they become available.
Earlier last week, it was expected that the Senate would pass its version of the first “minibus” spending package for FY2019, composed of the Energy and Water, Veterans Affairs, and Legislative Branch bills, by the end of the week. Late last Thursday, however, as a result of drawn out debates on partisan amendments related to “Waters of the U.S.” regulation and funding for the “veterans choice” program, the Senate leadership decided to postpone further debate on the measure until this week. The Senate is scheduled to take up the package again later this evening.
Although floor action on the spending package was postponed, the Senate appropriators continued to make progress in committee last week, as they approved three more spending bills: Homeland Security, Financial Services and General Government, and State and Foreign Operations.
More action on the appropriations is expected this week as Appropriations committees in both chambers are scheduled to take up their respective versions of the Labor-HHS-Education spending bill this week.