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Category: Legislation

House Looking at a Continuing Resolution

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House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) today said that Congress will need a continuing resolution before the end of the FY2015, which is September 30th.

There are three types of federal appropriations measures. Regular appropriations bills provide most of the funding that is provided in all appropriations measures for a fiscal year and must be enacted by October 1, the beginning of the fiscal year. These are the 12 regular appropriations bills which have been passing the House and Senate up until earlier this month.  If regular bills are not enacted by the beginning of the new fiscal year, Congress adopts continuing resolutions (CR) to continue funding, generally until regular bills are enacted. Supplemental appropriations bills provide additional appropriations to become available during a fiscal year.

The House has been largely stalled in moving appropriations bills forward since the FY2015 Interior Appropriations bill issues with the Confederate flag. It has largely been speculated that Congress will move towards a CR, which is a very commonly used funding device, and then begin working on a larger omnibus appropriations bill — a bill that combines many of the appropriations bills into one package. Omnibus appropriations bills are typically moved as straight up or down votes, at or near to the Christmas holidays.

While Boehner gave no indication as to how long a CR would be crafted or what it would look like, his mention is the first admission by senior Congressional leadership that a CR will happen.

Senate Finance Passes Tax Extenders

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The Senate Finance Committee marked up and passed a tax extenders package today by a vote of 23-3. The bill , among many other proposed tax breaks, would extend the teacher tax credit, the above the line deduction for qualified tuition and expenses, and the research tax deduction all through the end of 2016. A number of education-related amendments have been filed in advance of the markup. One, from Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), would extend the teacher tax credit to qualifying homeschool families. Another would repeal the tax imposed on student loans forgiven due to repayment under the income-based repayment program. Neither of these amendments passed.

While this measure passed the Senate Finance Committee fairly easily, its path forward remains unclear.

House Ways and Means Committee Chair Paul Ryan has stated that his committee will take up tax extenders in the Fall. Chairman Ryan has been adamant about addressing the shortfalls prior to December to ensure certainty for business and taxpayers.

Read a summary of the Senate package here. 

 

Senate Passes ESEA

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Today, the Senate finished its debate and votes on amendments to S. 1177, the Every Child Achieves Act, a bill to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). In total, of the 79 amendments that were voted on, 66 were adopted and 13 failed.

The Senate has passed a bipartisan overhaul of the long-expired No Child Left Behind education law by a vote of 81-17.

The bill would continue to require annual testing in reading and math but restores power over low-performing schools back to states.

The partisan House-passed version, which passed earlier this month,  goes to an extreme that Democrats and the White House have condemned. The most contentious point of the House version is that it would allow federal dollars to follow students to another public school of their choice.

To devise a version that can become law, lawmakers will have to satisfy White House concerns about the bill’s protections for poor and minority students and House GOP demands that the bill diminish the federal role in education.

 

House Pulls FY16 Interior Bill

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The House has pulled their FY16 Interior Appropriations bill amid controversy of a Confederate flag amendment. The House has previously considered and passed three amendments restricting funding for federal lands displaying the Confederate flag. Due to Republican concerns these restrictions might impose, an additional amendment was proposed to allow funding on federally owned park land displaying the Confederate flag. The crux of the issue: Civil War battle fields, the bulk of which are now federal park land and have memorials and cemeteries headstones with the flag on them. The bill did not have the votes to pass the House without the new amendment that allowed display of the Confederate flag on federal lands in some instances. Further, it was unclear that the bill had the votes to pass if the amendment was not included.

The bill was first considered but not finished before the July 4th Recess. It is unclear how the bill will or can move forward.

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.