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Category: Legislation

First Batch of Spending Bills Clears House Floor

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As expected, the House cleared its first package of FY2021 spending bills earlier this afternoon.  The four-bill batch, H. R. 7608, combines four separate pieces of legislation:  State-Foreign Operations; Agriculture; Interior and Environment; and Military Construction- Veterans Affairs.  It was adopted by a vote of 224 to 189.  A summary of H. R. 7608 is available here.

Next week, the House is currently scheduled to take up a second “minibus”, made up of seven appropriations bills:  Defense; Labor-HHS-Education; Commerce-Justice-Science; Homeland Security; Financial Services-General Government; Energy and Water; and Transportation-HUD.  That would leave the Legislative Branch measure as the only one of the 12 that will not have been taken up by the full chamber by the end of next week.

On the other side of the Hill, the Senate has yet to act on any of its bills, and with negotiations around the next COVID-relief bill expected to take up all of the time before the August recess, it is not expected do so until September at the earliest.

Spending Bills Move to the House Floor

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After a flurry of activities in subcommittee and full committee the last two weeks, the vast majority of FY2021 spending bills is scheduled to move to the House floor this week and next for consideration by the full chamber.  Rather than considering them individually, the bills will be grouped into two different “minibus” legislative packages.

The first grouping of bills, H.R 7608, is made up of four pieces of legislation and it is slated for consideration later this week:  State-Foreign Operations; Agriculture; Interior; and, Military Construction-Veterans Affairs.  A summary of the package, prepared by the House Democratic staff, is available here.

The second batch, H.R. 7617, is currently scheduled for floor action next week.  This second minibus pulls together seven of the eight remaining spending measures:  Defense; Commerce-Justice-Science; Energy and Water; Financial Services; Homeland Security; Labor-HHS-Education; and, Transportation-Housing.  A summary of the different parts of the large bill is available here.

Should these packages pass, only the Legislative Branch would remain unapproved in the House by the end of next week.

FY2021 Appropriations Bills Finally Moving

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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.

 

Higher Ed Community Seeking Support for Research and Additional Funds for Institutions in “Phase 4”

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As the push for a “Phase 4” coronavirus bill gains steam, the higher education community has come up with a set of requests for the still-developing package, some of which would augment provisions in “Phase 3” while others would create new sources of funding.

The broader higher education community is jointly advocating for this proposal, which would add approximately $47 billion to the Higher Education Fund that was created in the $2.2-trillion CARES Act.  The request is based on a set of assumptions that the community made in order to craft a timely proposal.

The research university community is making another push for research funding in a Phase 4 package.  In an effort to address a portion of the problems being caused by the pandemic, the group proposal calls for, among other items, $26 billion in the next legislative package to address the various needs in the research enterprise.

Broader Higher Education Community Looks to Engage with Federal Government to Address Community-Wide Challenges

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Yesterday, the broader higher education community sent to Congress a series of recommendations and requests for assistance aimed at stabilizing the entire enterprise as it tries to cope with COVID-19.  The requests fall into a number of distinct categories:

  • One set of requests addresses the immediate financial challenges facing both students and institutions.
  • Another set of requests focuses on the unique circumstances that research universities face as they deal with trying to mitigate the impact on research.
  • The third set  focuses on tax-related provisions that could assist students, families, and institutions.