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Category: Appropriations

CR Released, Should Pass This Week

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The continuing resolution (CR) was released late last night. The text of the legislation is here. The big news is that the CR will fund the federal government through April 28, 2017. The legislation maintains the current budget cap level of $1.07 trillion put into place under the Budget Control Act of 2011, which results in an across the board cut of .1901%.

The House is expected to vote on the measure on Thursday and the Senate is expected to follow suit on Friday. 

Big Items of Note: 

The Defense Overseas Contingency Fund, which is not subject to budget caps, was increased by $8 billion in response to the Administration’s request to combat ISIS. Of note, the Administration asked for $11.6 billion.  The CR increase does include RDT&E funding that is related to the Global War on Terrorism and the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Fund received a $87M increase.  The funding will go to both defense-specific funding to combat ISIS as well as non-military spending — such as Humanitarian Assistance, State Department and USAID operations funding, Economic and Stabilization Assistance, and Embassy security funding — to combat ISIS. 

The CR does add funding in FY 2017 to accounts created and highlighted in the Cures bill for opioids, NIH and FDA initiatives, and Flint drinking water. The Cures funding is fully offset per the authorizing bill. Specifically, the totals for the year amount to: 

  • $500 million in grants to states to fight opioid abuse, 
  • $352 for the new NIH Innovations Fund (as created by Cures), 
  • $20 million directed to the FDA Innovation account (as created by cures), and  
  • $50 million is directed to HHS to address health issues relating to a lead-tainted drinking water system in Michigan. 

There is a provision to address President-elect Trump’s Secretary of Defense nominee, Ret. USMC Gen. James. Mattis, who left service three years ago. Under a 1947 federal statute, Secretaries of Defense must be civilians or retired from service for at least 7 years to be eligible to serve; its an effort to assure civilian control of the military. This requirement has been waived once in 1950 for General George C. Marshall. 

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Other Items of Note:

There is additional funding to allow continued operations and data collection for continuation of data for weather warnings, including forecasts of severe weather events from NOAA’s Joint Polar Satellite System.

There is a provision allowing additional funding, if needed, for the housing and care of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) after February 1, 2017. The number of UACs has been spiking as of late and was an issue for the FY2017 appropriations cycle. Of note, this funding comes from the Labor-H appropriations bill. 

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Additional updates will be posted on our blog. 

CR to be Unveiled Today

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The House Leadership has announce that it will release the long-anticipated and negotiated continuing resolution (CR) today. The CR is not expected to have many anomalies and should be level funding from FY 2016 levels.  While there has been much negotiation between an end date in March 2017 or an end date in May 2017, the current thought is that the CR will continue federal funding until April 28, 2017. The current CR expires at midnight on Friday.

CR details will be posted as soon as they are available.

Home for the Holidays?

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The plan is for Congress to finish all its work for the year this week, with a stopgap spending measure to fund the government through next Spring. When in Spring? That’s still a very good question. 

The House Republicans held a conference meeting on Friday that did not resolve how long the stopgap should last or precisely what level of spending it should allow. Without conference agreement, only a handful of House and Senate GOP leaders and staff will decide the substance of a bill that will shape government spending for at least the better part of the current fiscal year. 

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said his goal is to complete all House action by Thursday, but the true deadline is this midnight on Friday, December 9th. That is when the previous CR expires. Failure to pass a new bill would trigger a government shutdown. The new measure will most likely extend current funding levels for most federal agencies through sometime between March and May. A precise timeline had yet to be decided.

Writing the continuing resolution, which generally forbids any new projects, also requires including provisions that allow agencies to make adjustments in their spending to meet changing needs; these are called anomalies. The Pentagon already has complained to budget writers that a long-term stopgap risks doing harm to needed weapons programs and troops currently deployed overseas. While each CR does have a limited amount of anomalies, do not expect broad sweeping increases, such as a multi-billion increase to NIH. 

As the House takes the first steps on the CR, the Senate will consider both 21st Century Cures and the NDAA conference report this week.

No Additional Funding for NIH in CR

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Senate Appropriations Labor-HHS subcommittee Chairman Roy Blunt (R-MO) has said today that the CR will not include the $2b bump to NIH that was included in the Senate bill. The CR, in whatever duration, should contain level funding of $32.084b or FY 2016 levels. There has been a research and health community effort to increase funding for NIH as an anomaly to the CR, but Blunt said today that it will not happen.

While this does not mean that an ultimate increase to NIH will not happen in a final FY 2017 package, it will not happen in the stopgap spending measure.

Additionally, there is now tension between the House and Senate as to when to end the CR. House is looking towards a March ending and the Senate wants a May date. 

CR Until May?

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Senate Republicans are now pushing for the Fy 2017 stop-gap continuing resolution to go through May 2017. The House, particularly House conservatives, have long advocated for a March 2017 date. The White House continues to push for a CR that is as short as possible to ensure the Pentagon gets the budget assurance it needs for ongoing conflicts.

Additionally, the White House sent an $11.6 b request for additional funding to combat ISIL at the beginning of November.

The text of the CR is not expected to be unveiled until next week as House and Senate leadership continue to work though these issues.