While the Congress has yet to introduce the long-negotiated FY2018 Omnibus appropriations bill, the House is now planning on introducing the bill late today. This sets the measure up for passage by the House on Thursday, and the Senate would move for passage Friday.
Stay tuned.
While there were hopes earlier in the day yesterday that the text of the omnibus spending for the rest of FY2018 would get released last night, ultimately, the contents of the bill were not shared yesterday. As noted yesterday, the hurdles in the discussions have been a number of policy riders.
Office of Federal Relations will continue to track the situation.
The short-term measure that is currently funding the majority of the government functions is set to expire Friday night/Saturday morning, when Congress is scheduled to begin a two-week spring recess. Congress is currently working on a massive omnibus spending package that would fund the government through the rest of FY2018. To provide additional budget room for the crafting of such a deal, a larger two-year budget agreement that was reached last month provides an extra $63 billion for non-defense and $80 billion for defense discretionary programs for the remainder of FY2018, which ends on September 30.
While agreements between the two parties have been reached on the vast majority of the decisions around funding levels for different programs and agencies, the sticking points have been a number of policy issues, including whether they would be addressed in the package. These include issues such as a fix for DACA, annual fights over abortion, and funding for a border wall sought by the Administration.
Office of Federal Relations will provide further updates.
Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS), Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, announced earlier this afternoon that he plans to resign from the Senate April 1. First elected to the Senate in 1978, he has been battling health issues for a number of months.
More details from the president’s budget request (PBR) are now becoming available and Office of Federal Relations will continue to provide further information after additional analysis.
Education
The Administration is seeking to make short-term programs eligible for the Pell Grant program in its Department of Education (ED) PBR. The PBR also calls for formula changes in the Federal Work Study program while calling for a $483-million cut to the program in FY2019.
In addition, the Administration calls for a $35-million cut to the TEACH Grant program.
The budget would restore $1.6 billion in the Pell surplus.
Additional details about the ED budget are available here.
Interior
Within the Department of Interior, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) would receive $859.7 million under the PBR, a cut of more than $200 million below FY2017 levels.
The USGS budget proposes to fund Earthquake Hazards at about $13 million below current levels and would eliminate funding for the Earthquake Early Warning System. The Administration’s PBR also would terminate the Cooperative Research Units in FY2019.
Additional details about the USGS budget are available here.
NASA
As previously mentioned, the PBR would eliminate the NASA Education Office, which would lead to the termination of the Space Grant program.
While the overall NASA Science account would see at modest increase at a total of $5.865 billion, most of the increase would be composed of an increase to Planetary Science. Earth Science, on the other hand, would be funded at $1.78 billion, a cut of approximately $120 million below FY2017 levels.
Additional details about NASA are available here.
NOAA
The Operations, Research, and Facilities (ORF) account for NOAA would be funded at approximately $2.94 billion FY2019 under this PBR, a cut of approximately $400 million below the FY2017 level.
The National Ocean Service ORF account would receive approximately $380 million in FY2019, a cut of roughly $138 million compared to the FY2017 level. This total amount includes a proposed cut of $11.1 million to the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS). At the same time, the Oceanic and Atmospheric Research ORF account would see a total of $296 million, a cut of $183 million. Once again, the PBR calls for the elimination of the Sea Grant Program.
NOAA budget numbers are available here.