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Category: On the Hill

House Passes Continuing Resolution

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The House passed a continuing resolution (“CR”), H.R. 8337, to fund the Federal Government through December 11th, 2020 and avoid a potential shutdown. The bipartisan resolution passed 359-57 and is part of a deal reached by House Democrats, Senate Republicans, and the Administration. The CR must still pass in the Senate and be signed by the President. The full story is available here.

As of now, all 12 FY 2021 appropriations bills have passed in the House, but none have passed in the Senate, indicating a likely long road ahead.

 

Meanwhile, the FY2021 Appropriations Bills Move Along

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While most of the public’s attention is focused on the difficult negotiations that may or may not be taking placing on the next COVID relief package, the clock continues to count down to the start of FY2021.

The House is working to adopt a second “minibus” of spending bills before this weekend.  Instead of taking up a seven-bill package as originally planned, the chamber is now considering one made up of six pieces, having removed the almost-always-controversial Homeland Security measure from the minibus.  More than 300 amendments are expected to be debated before a vote to adopt the legislation.

This week’s package is made up of:  Commerce-Justice-Science; Defense; Energy and Water; Labor-HHS-Education; Financial Services-General Government; and Transportation-HUD bills.  Last week, the House cleared the Agriculture, Interior, State-Foreign Operations, and VA-Military Construction measures.  This leaves the Homeland Security and Legislative Branch bills for future consideration.

The Senate still has yet to produce any of the 12 bills.

Defense, CJS Bills Approved; Last Two Bills Slated for Today

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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.

House Spending Bills Continue to Move Along

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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:

  • Overall basic research:  $2.62 billion (0.7% increase)
  • Overall applied research:  $5.92 billion (2.5% decrease)
  • Army basic research:  $570.6 million (0.7% decrease)
  • Army applied research:  $1.23 billion (2.0% decrease)
  • Navy basic research:  $638.9 million (1.8% decrease)
  • Navy applied research:  $1.04 billion (10.2% decrease)
  • Air Force basic research:  $527.3 million (4.1% decrease)
  • Air Force applied research:  $1.53 billion (7.7% decrease)
  • Defense-wide basic research:  $884.7 million (6.8% increase)
  • Defense-wide applied research:  $1.95 billion (2.0% decrease)
  • DARPA (Total):  $3.51 billion (1.5% increase)

In addition, we will provide details about the other spending bills of relevance as they become available.

 

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.