The House Appropriations Committee cleared three more FY2021 spending bills yesterday, all by votes of 30 – 22: Defense, Commerce-Justice-Science, and Transportation-Housing Urban Development. Yesterday’s action leaves the last two bills for FY2021 for committee action today, the Homeland Security and Financial Services-General Government measures.
The Senate has yet to take up any of its bills.
The House Appropriations Committee cleared this morning two more FY2021 spending bills: Legislative Branch and Interior. The committee has now approved five of the 12 bills for the year. It is slated to take up the remaining seven measures next week, with the Energy and Water Development and Labor-HHS-Education bills teed up for Monday. On Tuesday, the following are currently on the agenda: Defense, Commerce-Justice-Science, and Transportation-Housing. The Homeland Security and Financial Services-General Government spending measures are scheduled for Wednesday.
While the report accompanying the Defense bill is not yet publicly available, we do know several details about various accounts funded by the DOD. These include, for example:
In addition, we will provide details about the other spending bills of relevance as they become available.
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
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
Student Aid
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:
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:
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.
As noted this morning, negotiators had been working to reach an agreement on the next COVID-19-related bill, scheduling a Senate session for this afternoon. A deal has officially been reached on the legislation.
The $484-billion measure includes, among other provisions:
The bill does not include any additional funds for states and localities.
Senate Democrats are calling this package an “interim” measure, fully expecting to take up a “Phase 4” bill later this spring.
The Senate is scheduled to meet at 4 PM EDT with the hopes of passing the bill by unanimous consent.
As noted earlier this morning, the Senate passed the $2-trillion relief package last night by a vote of 96 to 0. Before the vote on final passage, there was plenty of last-minute drama that had to be addressed.
One of the late issues was raised by a group of conservative Senators who raised objections to provisions in the bill that would both extend the length of eligibility for unemployment benefits as well as the size of the unemployment checks. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) countered by asserting that he would hold up progress on the legislation if those provisions were changed. Ultimately, the group of conservatives was allowed to offer an amendment that would have decreased the benefits, which was defeated. Following that, the Senate approved the bill 96 to 0.
Even as the Senate was debating the package, questions swirled about how the House would take it up, as most Members are currently back in their districts and face difficult choices about whether and how to return to Washington to vote. At this point, the House is scheduled to bring up the bill on Friday and will seek to pass it by voice vote rather than take a roll call vote.
Read more about the behind the scenes debates and conversations in: