Senate Appropriations Committee Announces Markups

Posted on April 8, 2016

Like the House, The Senate Appropriations Committee has announced will hold full committee markups of the Energy-Water and Military Construction-VA appropriations bills on Thursday, April 14. At that meeting, the committee will also disclose discretionary spending levels for individual subcommittees, known as 302(b)s.

The Senate has yet to pass its FY 2017 Budget, but Majority Leader McConnell (R-KY) has previously announced the Senate’s intention to hold to the budget agreement made last year, and move forward with a deeming motion allowing the FY 2017 appropriations process to move forward.

House Appropriations Committee Announces Mark Ups

Posted on April 8, 2016

The House Appropriations Committee announced that they will be marking up three FY 2017 bills next week. The subcommittees for Agriculture and Energy & Water will consider their respective bills and the full committee will consider the FY 2017 Military Construction-VA bill. The committee had released a draft bill of the Military Construction-VA bill prior to Congress’s Easter Recess. All three are among the least controversial of the annual appropriations bills.

Additionally, the committee announced plans to consider an “interim report” on sub-allocations of discretionary budget allocations, which likely refers to provisional discretionary spending levels for the 12 appropriations subcommittees known as 302(b)s.

The announcement comes in advance of the House’s return from the Easter break, and when the House returns, there will be a short four legislative days to enact a FY 2017 Budget Resolution.

With House Republicans stymied on a fiscal 2017 budget resolution, the House Rules Committee will consider changes to the appropriations process next week that could be aimed at finding a compromise to the budget conundrum. Those changes could include a measure to allow appropriators to cut mandatory spending. Conservatives are looking for a way to guarantee mandatory spending cuts to offset higher discretionary spending. Regardless, there should be significant Congressional movement next week.

House Budget Crunch, Appropriators Roll On

Posted on March 22, 2016

Originally, House Republicans had planned this short work week as one to adopt the FY 2017 budget blueprint passed by the House Budget Committee last week. Passing a FY 2017 budget, despite the two year budget agreement reached last year, was to reinforce the Republican base and broadly that Republicans can rise above and lead in Washington. Instead, the House will adjourn Wednesday for a two-week-plus Easter recess with little to show for their efforts.

When the House returns to work April 12, they will have only four legislative days left to adopt a budget by the statutory deadline of April 15. While House leadership hopes to use the recess to get a deal, the signs have been far from promising. Last week, House Budget Committee approved the plan by a 20-16 vote, with two Republicans joining all 14 Democrats in opposition.

The conservative House Freedom Caucus remains opposed to the Committee-passed FY 2017 Budget plan because it has a discretionary spending cap of $1.07 billion, which is $30 billion above what would be allowed under the deficit-cutting Budget Control Act, which was enacted in 2011. Instead, the FY 2017 House Budget uses a higher limit was first negotiated under a two-year bipartisan budget deal enacted last year under former-Speaker John Boehner.

House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-GA) had tried to broker a compromise to the higher discretionary levels by coupling the additional $30 billion in discretionary funding with consideration of separate legislation that would cut entitlement programs by $30 billion over two years. However, House Conservatives refused the offer and expressed skepticism that any legislation containing entitlement cuts would ever pass, particularly in the filibuster-prone Senate. Additionally, House Democrats denounced the effort to cut entitlements such as Medicare as a betrayal of last year’s bipartisan deal.

Strong and public opposition by the Freedom Caucus has forced House Republican leadership to postpone a House floor vote, knowing they lack the 218 votes needed to ensure its success — nearly with all House Democrats and nearly forty Freedom Caucus members in opposition.

While the House Republican leadership remains hopeful at brokering a budget deal, a lesser version of an official budget, known as a deeming resolution, would set a simple topline discretionary spending limits could be used and would allow the Appropriations committees to ascertain their discretionary spending limits known as 302(b)s for the 12 respective, annual appropriations bills. However, a deeming resolution would likely need support from Democrats to pass.

Meanwhile, given the budget agreement reached least year, an official FY 2017 budget is unnecessary for topline, overall spending levels, but the discretionary spending levels for the individual 12 respective appropriations bills remain in question, which is the reason for the FY 2017 budget.

There has been discussion about proceeding to the annual appropriations bills without any enforceable spending limits, such as an official budget or a deeming resolution. However, doing so is unprecedented .

Meanwhile, House Appropriators are moving forward without an official FY 2017 Budget and released the text of the FY 2017 Military Construction-VA bill today. The measure provides $81.6 billion in discretionary funding. The bill provides $7.9 billion for military construction projects and $176.1 billion in mandatory and discretionary funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Markup of the bill is scheduled for Wednesday by the Military Construction-VA Subcommittee and will kick off legislative action on the 12 appropriations for FY 2017.

FY2017 Appropriations Season in Full Swing

Posted on March 7, 2016

The House is out this week, but the Senate is in, voting today on a procedural motion to close debate on a measure that would provide grants for opioid abuse prevention and treatment programs. The Senate will also be hearing about the President’s FY2017 budget plans for a variety of agencies. Most hearings will be broadcast live via the web. Here are the highlights:

Tuesday, March 8:

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on Forest Service budget, 10:00am ET
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on Homeland Security Department budget, 10:00am ET
Senate Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee hearing on Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement budgets, 2:30pm ET

Wednesday, March 9:

Senate Appropriations Interior-Environment Subcommittee hearing on Indian Health Service budget, 10:00am ET
Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee hearing on Defense Health Program, 10:30am ET
Senate Appropriations Agriculture Subcommittee hearing on Agriculture Department budget, 2:00pm ET
Senate Appropriations Energy-Water Subcommittee hearing on Energy Department budget, 2:30pm ET

Thursday, March 10:

Senate Appropriations Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee hearing on Education Department budget, 10:00am ET
Senate Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science Subcommittee hearing on NASA budget, 10:30am ET
Senate Appropriations Military Construction-VA Subcommittee hearing on Veterans Affairs Department budget, 11:00am ET
Senate Appropriations Transportation-HUD Subcommittee hearing on Housing and Urban Development Department budget, 2:30pm ET

President Releases FY2017 Budget

Posted on February 9, 2016February 10, 2016

Today, President Barack Obama proposed a $4.23 trillion FY 2017 budget, which will be his last in office. Overall, the White House’s proposal sticks with the discretionary spending limits set by last year’s budget deal.

Predictably the lame-duck budget was met with dismissal by Congress. Republican appropriators are complaining that the Administration is circumventing the budget caps by leaning heavily on new mandatory funding for programs that typically would receive discretionary dollars controlled by Congress. However, the President’s budget is symbolically the beginning of the federal appropriations conversations.

Included in the request was $19 billion for cybersecurity efforts a proposed a 35 percent increase in federal funds for the next budget year to boost the nation’s ability to safeguard its computer networks, both private and public, from attacks while preserving privacy.

For the third year in a row, the President proposed his College Opportunity and Graduation Bonus. In FY17, the program would provide $547 million for colleges that do a good job graduating low-income students on time. Department officials said the proposal is an important complement to student-focused incentives like the new $300 Pell bonus for recipients who take at least 15 credits per semester. The bonus would reward institutions that improve in this area, regardless of how well they were doing in the first place.

Other items of note include:

Defense S&T is cut by more than $535 million with nearly 40% of the cuts coming from 6.1 basic research.

The budget provides $7.96 billion for the National Science Foundation, of which $7.56 is discretionary and $400 million is new mandatory funding. For discretionary, this would be a 1.3% increase, but including mandatory an increase of 6.7%, over FY 2016. All directorates, including SBE and GEO received 6 percent increases.

The Administration is is requesting $19.025 billion for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which is $300 million below FY 2016. This includes mandatory spending. The current fact sheet available doesn’t break out discretionary vs. mandatory. The Science directorate would get $5.6 billion, which is an increase of $12 million or 0.02%. Space Tech would be $827 million, an increase of 20%. Aeronautics would get $790 million, an increase of 23.4%. NASA Space Grant would receive $24 million.

NIST provided funding to expand the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI) institutes by providing $42 million to launch two new institutes in 2017 and continue operations of the first Commerce led institute. The Budget also proposes an additional $1.9 billion in mandatory funding for an additional 27 institutes, completing the President’s vision for a network of 45 institutes over the next ten years.

NOAA

NOAA OAR would get $519.7 million, which would be an increase of 12.4%. NOAA Climate Research was allocated $159.1 million.
$12 million increase for investments in finding solutions to the challenge of ocean acidification. NOAA’s ocean acidification program
NOAA SeaGrant would get $68.9 million, which is $4 million below FY 2016.

The Department of Education received $69.4 billion in FY2017 for discretionary spending, an increase of roughly $1 billion from FY2016. An initial pass at the budget includes big wins for ESSA programs and supports including preschool and Head Start ($9.6 billion for Head Start, an increase of $434 million).

ED and the Administration announced previously that it was creating an enforcement unit within the Office of Federal Student Aid to respond to allegations, and the budget request includes $13.6 million specifically for FSA enforcement and oversight activities.

Pell: The Budget would see the maximum grant award for students boosted by $20, from $5,915 to $5,935, the administration is proposing an additional $2 billion for changes to encourage students to complete their degrees
FAFSA Changes: The Budget proposes to eliminate up to 30 burdensome and unnecessarily complex questions, shortening the FAFSA application substantially, and making it easier for students and families to access critical resources to pay for college.
Tax Changes: The Budget would streamline and expand education tax benefits by: 1) consolidating the Lifetime Learning Credit into an expanded AOTC; 2) exempting Pell Grants from taxation and the AOTC calculation; and 3) eliminating tax on student loan debt forgiveness, while repealing the complicated student loan interest deduction for new borrowers.