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Category: Health/Medical

First Spending Bills to be Cleared by Friday?

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The conference report for the package that contains the first three appropriations bills of FY2019– Energy and Water, Legislative Branch, and Military Construction-Veterans Affairs– was quickly adopted by the Senate yesterday by a vote of 92 to 5.  An agreement between the House and Senate negotiators was reached on it earlier this week.

The House is scheduled to take up the measure later today and is expected to clear it by Friday, clearing it for the President’s signature.  As noted above, these three bills, if signed into law, would represent the first spending bills approved for FY2019, which starts on Oct 1.

On a related note, House and Senate conferees are scheduled to formally meet today on two other sets of spending bills.  The first combines the Labor-Health and Human Services-Education and Defense bills and second pulls together the Interior, Agriculture, Transportation-Housing, and Financial Services bills.

Senate Agrees to Domestic-Defense Appropriations Package

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As expected, the Senate adopted last Thursday an appropriations package made up of the two largest spending bills, the Labor-HHS-Education and Defense measures.  The Senate approved the $856.9-billion package by a vote of 85 to 7.  While the House cleared its version of the Defense bill, it has yet to move on Labor-HHS.

Among other items, the Senate bill would fund the NIH at $39.1 billion in FY2019, an increase of $2 billion over the FY2018 level.  During the floor debate, several amendments of interest were adopted, including:

  • An amendment from Roy Blunt (R-MO), Patty Murray (D-WA), and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) that would transfer $5 million from the NIH Office of the Director to the Office of the Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human Services “for oversight of grant programs and operations of the National Institutes of Health, including agency efforts to ensure the integrity of its grant application evaluation and selection processes.”
  • A Blunt-Murray amendment authorizing the Department of Education to allow institutions of higher education to service outstanding Federal Perkins Loans.

Labor-HHS Spending Bill Clears House Committee

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After an all-day markup, the FY2019 House Labor-HHS-Education bill was cleared by the Appropriations Committee last night. The committee’s adoption of the bill means that 11 of the 12 spending bills have cleared the House Appropriations Committee; the Senate committee has cleared all of its bills.

The 13-hour markup was contentious at times, with heated debates on a number of issues, including child separation.  Of the roughly 50 amendments offered and debated during the session, a significant number of them focused on child separation practices at the border.

Although the bill has now cleared the committee process, it is unclear at this point whether it will see floor action in the near future.

A copy of the bill is available here and the accompanying report is available here.

 

 

Appropriations Process Continues to Move Forward

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The FY2019 appropriations process continued to move forward today.

The House agreed to its version of the Defense spending bill by a vote of 359 to 49.  The detailed report for the bill is available here.

In the Senate, the full Appropriations Committee adopted its version of the Labor-HHS-Education and Defense spending bills.  While most of the details from the two bills are not yet available, the bills’ highlights have been posted by committee here and here.

 

 

Progress and Delay on Labor-HHS-Education Bill

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The House Appropriations Committee was scheduled to take up today its FY2019 Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Bill.  The legislation funds, among other agencies and programs, those that support biomedical research and student financial aid, such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Pell Grants.  The committee markup, however, has been postponed until after the July Fourth recess. While Republicans are citing scheduling issues as the cause of the postponement, Democrats are claiming that the delay is due to Republican concerns about amendments that will likely be offered by Democrats to address family separation issues during the markup session.

As it stands, the current version of the legislation, the details of which are available here, would hold the Pell Grant maximum steady at $6,095 while funding the program at $22.475 billion overall.  With respect to other financial aid and higher education programs, Work Study would receive $1.13 billion while TRIO and GEAR-UP would be funded at $1.01 billion and $360 million, respectively.  SEOG would also bevlevel funded at $840.0 million.

International Education-Title VI programs and the Institute for Education Sciences would be held level at $72.1 million and $613 million, respectively, by the House bill.

On the biomedical research front, NIH would see an increase of $1.25 billion under this bill and would receive $38.33 billion.  The Health Resources and Services Administration would receive $6.54 billion under this bill.

On the other side of the Hill, the Senate Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee is scheduled to take up its version of the FY2019 bill later this morning.  The full Appropriations Committee is scheduled to mark up the legislation on Thursday, when it is also expected to consider the Defense spending bill.  The Office of Federal Relations will report on the details as they become available.