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FY2021 Appropriations Bills Finally Moving

With schedules and logistics thrown into complete disarray by COVID-19, progress on the FY2021 spending bills had been stalled.  The logjam has been partially broken, at least for now, in the House, with all 12 bills scheduled for markup this week.

Office of Federal Relations will provide additional details as they become available.  The following are some of the highlights of several different bills so far:

Labor-HHS-Education

National Institutes of Health

  • $47 billion total, an increase of $5.5 billion above current level ($5 billion of the increase is emergency appropriations, meaning the regular appropriation for the agency is $42 billion)

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

  • $343 million, an increase of $500 million

Student Aid

  • Pell Grant Maximum:  $6,945, an increase of $150
  • SEOG:  $880 M ($15-million increase)
  • Federal Work Study:  $1.2 billion ($30-million increase)
  • GEAR UP:  $1.1 billion (an increase of $5 million)

The legislation would also prohibit the Department of Education from implementing its new Title IX regulations.

The text of the bill is available here and a summary of the bill prepared by the committee staff is available here.  The report accompanying the bill, which contains most of the detailed breakdown of funding, is not yet available.

Commerce-Justice-Science

National Science Foundation

Under the bill unveiled earlier today, NSF would be funded at $8.55 billion, an increase of $270 million.  Within NSF:

  • Research and Related Activities Directorate would be funded at $6.97 billion (an increase of $229.9 million
  • Education and Human Resources would be funded at $970 million (an increase of $30 million.

NASA

NASA would be flat-funded at $22.63 billion in the bill.  The bill proposes to divide up the funding, in part, in the following manner:

  • Science:  $7.1 billion (a decrease of $42 million)
  • Aeronautics:  $819 million (an increase of $35 million)
  • Space Tech:  $1.1 billion (level funded)
  • Space Grant:  $50 million (an increase of $2 million)

NOAA

The bill would fund NOAA at $5.45 billion, an increase of $101.9 million.

This is the text of the bill and a summary is available here.

Interior

The current version of the House bill contains $36.76 billion in regular appropriations, an increase of $771 million, and $15 billion in emergency appropriations.

While we have not yet seen further breakdowns for the agency, the USGS is slated to receive an increase of $22 million under this bill.

Both the NEH and the NEA would each be funded at $170 million, an increase of $7.5 million.

The bill text is available here and the summary of the bill is available here.

Energy and Water

Under the the subcommittee-approved bill, the Department of Energy Office of Science would see an increase of $50 million and would be funded at $7.05 billion.

ARPA-E would see an increase of $10 million, while the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy program.would be funded at $2.85 billion, an increase of $58 million.

The summary for the bill is available here.

Full Committee

The full Appropriations Committee is slated to take up the Interior bill on Friday and is scheduled to mark up both the Labor-HHS-Education and Energy and Water bills next Monday.

We will provide further details as they become available.

 

Senate Hearings on Reopening Schools

The US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will hold two hearings related to school reopening and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The first hearing “COVID-19: Going Back to College Safely” is on reopening colleges and universities.

Date: Tuesday, June 4th, 2020

Time: 7am PT/10am ET

Watch live here.

The second hearing “COVID-19: Going Back to School Safely” is on reopening K-12 schools.

Date: Wednesday, June 10th, 2020

Time: 7am PT/10am ET

Watch live here.

 

 

 

Another COVID Supplemental Passes in House

Today the US House of Representatives voted to pass H.R. 6800 (HEROES Act), a $3 trillion supplemental appropriations bill which includes a wide range of provisions ranging from healthcare to agriculture and nutrition. The legislation now moves to the Senate, although no vote has been scheduled yet.

The House also voted on a resolution to approve remote committee work, potentially allowing for FY21 appropriations to proceed remotely. The House is expected to meet on May 27th and 28th to vote on a FISA Re-authorization and discuss COVID related business.

Public Health Dean Testifying Before Senate Committee

Tomorrow May 6th, Dr. Hilary Godwin will testify before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Dr. Godwin is Dean of the School of Public Health. The hearing is titled The State of the Aviation Industry: Examining the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic. It is scheduled for 2:30 ET/11:30 PT and can be watched live here.

Text and Section-by-Section Summaries of “Phase 3” Now Available

The text of the Senate Republican stimulus bill, “Phase 3,” has been released and is available here.

In addition, several chairmen of the committees that would have jurisdiction over different parts of the bill have released summaries of the parts of the bill that they would oversee.  The section-by-section summaries of parts of the bill that are most relevant to UW and other universities are provided below:

As noted previously, this is the initial proposal from the Senate Republican and it will need to be modified along the way as they begin to negotiate with Congressional Democrats, who will also have their own priorities.