President Biden & Speaker McCarthy Set to Meet Tuesday to Discuss the Debt Ceiling

Posted on May 8, 2023May 15, 2023

President Biden, Speaker McCarthy, and other congressional leaders are set to meet on Tuesday to discuss raising the debt ceiling amidst the ongoing political standoff and renewed urgency given the Treasury Department’s warning that the government could default on its debt as soon as June 1. House Republicans passed their debt ceiling bill last week that would increase the debt ceiling while cutting federal spending by more than $3.5 trillion over the coming decade. The plan would cut discretionary spending by an average of 18% over the next decade with little detail on which programs would be cut or spared. The New York Times estimates that if defense, veterans’ health, and border security are spared (which has been discussed), the remaining programs would have to be cut by half. The bill also includes provisions that repeal some of the Biden administration’ priorities including the plan to cancel student loan debt.

House Democrats meanwhile are calling for an increase in the debt ceiling without conditions (which was done multiple times during the Trump presidency) but the House Republicans claim they will not budge. Tuesday will be the first time in seven months that President Biden and Speaker McCarthy will meet to discuss this issue which will a critical to see if any progress can be made.

FY24 Appropriations Process Is Underway: President’s Budget Request is Released

Posted on March 23, 2023April 3, 2023

Earlier this month, the FY2024 President’s Budget Request (PBR) was released outlining the administration’s priorities for the coming fiscal year. The overall request is self-described as a blueprint to build on the past two years to “grow the economy from the bottom up and middle out by investing in America, lowering costs for families, protecting and strengthening Medicare and Social Security, and reducing the deficit by nearly $3 trillion over the next decade”.

The FY24 PBR included:

$8,215 per Pell Grant award (an $820 increase over FY23)
$21 billion in discretionary spending for CHIPS & Science-authorized activities including $1.2 billion for the Directorate of Technology Innovation and Partnerships (TIP)
$48.26 billion for NIH (an increase of 1.7% over FY23)
$2.5 billion for ARPA-H (a $1 billion increase over FY23)
$27.2 billion for NASA (a 7.1% increase over FY23), and
$11.3 billion for NSF (an 18.6% increase over FY23 enacted level of $9.5 billion)

Now the House and Senate will review the request and vote on a Budget Resolution that decides on topline numbers for discretionary funding. Here is where things could get tricky as the new divided Congress will likely have trouble coming to an agreement.

Check out a more complete list of programs and accounts on our updated appropriations tracker, including the FY24 budget request numbers, here. We will continue to add to this once more budget justifications are released and as the appropriations process continues.

House Still Making History

Posted on January 4, 2023

The House of Representatives is still making history today, failing to elect a Speaker after a fifth round of voting, which concluded just a few minutes ago. The last time the voting for Speaker among the House Members went beyond the first ballot was a hundred years ago. The level of opposition to Kevin McCarthy of California among the House Republicans actually grew between the first and the fifth votes.

Read more about the developments here, here, and here.

Something We Haven’t Seen in A Long Time…

Posted on January 3, 2023

As expected, the new 118th House of Representatives gathered earlier today to elect the new Speaker. Before the new Members gathered to vote, all of Washington knew that Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who was the Minority Leader in the 117th Congress, was going to have a difficult time garnering enough support from the most hard-core rightwing of the House Republican caucus. The first vote for Speaker demonstrated exactly how difficult a path McCarthy faces.

With 218 voted needed to become Speaker, McCarthy received even fewer votes that many of his supporters had predicted: he received 203 votes, with 19 House Republicans opposing his Speakership. In fact, the new Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York received more votes for Speaker, with a total of 212. For the first time in 100 years, the vote for Speaker is now headed to a second ballot.

Read more about the situation here, here, here, and here.

Much-Awaited Omnibus Spending Bill Finally Released

Posted on December 20, 2022

Nearly three months into the new fiscal year and after months of seemingly little-to-no negotiations,

Congressional leaders released the much-awaited FY2023 omnibus appropriations package late yesterday. Coming in at more than 4,100 pages, it contains all 12 spending bills for FY2023. The current short-term government funding measure expires at midnight Saturday and Congressional leaders are working to get the new measure passed before then.

The Office of Federal Relations is in the process of digging through the package and details will emerge throughout the process. We will share new information contained in the bill along the way. In the meantime, we wanted to highlight a few of the initial highlights from the bill below:

The Pell Grant maximum would increase by $500 and the new maximum would increase to $7,395 for the next academic year.
NIH would be funded at $47.5 billion, an increase of $2.5 billion.
ARPA-H would see a total of $1.5 billion, which is also authorized, an increased of $500 M. ARPA-H will be administratively within NIH, but the bill prohibits ARPA-H, including its headquarters, from being physically located on any part of the existing NIH campus, and it requires ARPA-H to have offices or facilities in not less than 3 geographic areas. Further, in determining the location of these offices or facilities, the director is required to make “fair and open consideration” of the characteristics of the intended location and the extent to which the location will facilitate the advancement of the goals and functions of the agency.
NSF would be funded at $9.87 billion for FY2023, with the appropriators acknowledging that expectations were set for the agency by the CHIPS and Science Act, passed earlier this year.
- Of the funds allocated to NSF, approximately $7.8 M would be for the Research and Related Activities Account while $1.37 billion would be for the Education and Human Resources Account.
Within NASA, which would be funded at $25.4 billion, $7.8 billion would go to Science. Space Grant would be funded at $58 million.
NOAA Oceanic and Atmospheric Research would be funded at $661.3 million, which would include funding of $104 million for the cooperative institutes.
Base Sea Grant would be funded at $80 million while Sea Grant Aquaculture would see a funding level of $14 million.

With respect to a provision that applies to a host of programs across different departments and agencies, the bill would wave “PAYGO” rules, which would implement mandatory sequester cuts to various programs, for FY2023 and FY2024.

As we said above, we will continue to dig through the legislation and the accompanying reports. Both are available on the Senate Appropriations Committee webpage here.