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Category: Legislation

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

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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.   

Much-Awaited Omnibus Spending Bill Finally Released

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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.

 

Senate Clears Reconciliation Package; House to Take It Up Friday

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After a marathon series of votes on amendments over the weekend, the Senate cleared by a vote of 51-50 a version of the reconciliation budget package.  With all 50 Democrats supporting the measure and all 50 Republicans voting against it, Vice President Harris cast the tie-breaking vote.  Because the measure isa reconciliation bill, which provided it procedural protections, it could move forward in the Senate with a simple majority vote.

The House is currently scheduled to take it up on Friday.

We will provide further details about the bill  in the near future.

FY2023 Spending Bills Set to Start Moving This Week

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The FY2023 appropriations season is set to kick off this week in the House with a number of Appropriations subcommittees scheduled to take up their respective bills.

Of the bills set to be marked up this week, the defense bill is of the most interest. While the text of the bill has been published, the accompanying report, which contains the details about the measure, is not yet available. We will provide details about this, and other, appropriations measures as they become available.