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Category: Higher Education

White House Memo on Science Priorities for FY2017

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The White House’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Shaun Donovan, and OSTP Director, John Holdren, sent their annual joint FY2017 priorities memo to the science agency heads.

The memo urges agency leaders to take the priorities into consideration as they begin to prepare their FY2017 budget proposals for OMB.  Per the memo, “Agency proposals aligned with multi-agency R&D priorities and demonstrating interagency coordination are more likely to be prioritized in FY2017 Budget deliberations.”

Read the memorandum here.

 

 

House Turns to 21st Century Cures

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The House will consider HR 6, the 21st Century Cures Act. The bipartisan bill modifies current federal processes involving medical research, developing drugs and other treatments, and testing and approving those drugs and treatments in an effort to accelerate the development and delivery of cures to diseases and medical conditions. It reauthorizes the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for three years and includes numerous initiatives to promote medical research and attract young scientists, and it reauthorizes Food and Drug Administration (FDA) activities for five years and modifies elements of FDA’s drug and medical device review and approval process to accelerate the approval and distribution of new drugs and medical devices for diseases and conditions that don’t currently have treatments. It provides $9.3 billion in fully offset mandatory spending for a five-year “Innovation Fund” to provide additional funding to the two agencies, with NIH to receive $1.75 billion a year for biomedical research and the FDA to receive $110 million a year for Cures development activities.

The measure has bipartisan and Administrative support.

The House will begin to consider the measure today and pass it by Friday.

House Passes ESEA

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This evening, the House further considered and passed HR 5, the Student Success Act, which reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The House voted on ten amendments for which recorded votes were already requested in February 2015 and considered four new amendments, as well as a Democratic motion to recommit. The bill passed by a narrow vote of 218-213. No Democrats voted for the measure. The legislation would make fundamental changes to many of its programs through fiscal 2019. Additionally, it would allow Title I funding to follow individual students to other schools, and eliminates more than 65 elementary and secondary education programs and merges their funding. The White House has threatened to veto the bill.

The Senate has been and will continue to debate their version of ESEA (S 1177, Every Child Achieves Act of 2015) for the remainder of the week. The White House has issued a Statement of Administrative policy on S 1177, requesting changes to the testing cap, but not a veto threat.

Senate Appropriations Committee Passes FY16 Labor-H

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Today, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed it’s FY16 Labor-H bill by a vote of 16-14. The Senate draft would cut spending from the 2015 enacted level by almost $4 billion to $153 billion and is $14.5 billion below President Barack Obama’s request. The bill would eliminate funding for the Independent Payment Advisory Board, created by the 2010 health law (PL 111-148, PL 111-152) to recommend Medicare spending cuts under certain circumstances.

Both the House and Senate FY16 Labor-H proposals are now cleared to be considered by their respective bodies. There is no timeline on when the Senate would begin consideration of its draft.

House Committee Passes FY16 Labor-H

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The House Appropriations Committee passed it’s FY16 Labor-H bill by a vote of 30-21. The passage came after hours of debate during which Democrats bitterly criticized funding levels for domestic discretionary accounts and saw a series of their amendments defeated. The bill is $3.7 billion below fiscal 2015 enacted levels and $14.6 billion below President Barack Obama’s budget request. It contains increased funding for the National Institutes of Health but would block new discretionary spending to implement the Affordable Care Act. Additionally, the Administration has issued a letter of concern about the legislation. It is speculated that an official veto threat will not be far behind.

The legislation is expected to be considered on the House Floor after the Fourth of July Recess.