Ok, what now? Will we or won’t we shut down?

Posted on December 19, 2024

The three-month Continuing Resolution (CR) was unveiled late Tuesday. After its contents were digested throughout the day yesterday, the dynamics around the CR passing changed drastically last night. A government shutdown starting at midnight Saturday is now a very real possibility. While a shutdown is possible, it is important to keep in mind that only certain parts and functions of the federal government would be shut down and federal employees will be furloughed. Many parts of the academic research community will feel the impact of the shutdown.

A host of basic federal functions and services will be temporarily shut down, with federal employees furloughed. For example, while National Parks may remain open (they have been closed during shutdowns), they will be devoid of staff and services. Visa processing will cease and State Department employees in consulates overseas will not be able to do any screening.

Many of the functions related to the federal research enterprise, such as the processing and reviewing of grant applications, will be temporarily unavailable. Significant portions of the funding agencies’ staff will be furloughed, and they will be legally prohibited from performing any of their duties, so all work products including emails, phone calls, etc. are prohibited. Questions related to proposals, applications, and other issues will not be answered during the shutdown.

Activities deemed essential will continue, however, even during a shutdown. Employees of the Transportation Security Administration will continue to screen passengers at airports. Members of the military will continue to be on duty and serve, but those who manage shipbuilding will be furloughed. The Social Security Administration will continue to process monthly checks to seniors. However, none of these essential workers will be paid for their efforts during the shutdown.

Even at the agencies forced to shut down many of their functions, a number of employees and activities are classified as “essential” employees, meaning that they would still be working and functioning throughout the shutdown to maintain the agencies’ critical services. In the academic context, examples include continuing to support labs with animal subjects. Agencies prepare for shutdown scenarios and each agency updates its policies regarding employees and functions that are considered “essential.” Each agency is prepared for this latest potential shutdown.

As a result of change in law after the last shutdown, each federal employee is guaranteed back-pay from their furlough. Unfortunately, federal contractors have no such guarantee.

Please continue to check this space for updates.

Congress Unveils Spending Bill

Posted on December 19, 2024

After much anticipation, Congressional leaders finally unveiled the Further Continuing Appropriations and Disaster Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2025, a Continuing Resolution (CR) that would stave off the government shutdown slated for Friday night. The 1,547-page legislative package would fund the government through March 14, 2025.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is seeking to pass the bill through the House Rules Committee, which would allow it to then pass through the full House with just a simple majority. A number of prominent GOP members, however, have cast doubt on its ability to pass through the committee. If that is the case, Johnson would have to bring up the CR for consideration on the House floor under a procedure called Suspension of the Rules, which would require a two-thirds majority for passage. This would require Johnson to rely heavily on House Democrats to pass the bill.

While the most significant purpose of this CR is the continuation of government funding through March 2025, the legislation contains a vast array of important riders and add-ons. The additional provisions are known as a Christmas tree provisions.

The bill overhauls the pharmacy benefit managing process, provides $100 billion in disaster relief aid and $30 billion in aid to farmers, and contains language restricting U.S. capital investment in China. Also notable are provisions that set aside billions of dollars for the Navy to purchase more nuclear-powered Virginia-class attack submarines and the first pay raise for Members of Congress in 15 years.

Some of these provisions have garnered criticism from both Democrats and Republicans. The biggest hurdle to passage appears to be GOP hardliners, such as Reps. Chip Roy and Michael Cloud both of Texas, who have taken issue with the limited amount of time Members will have to consider the bill, as well as the lack of measures to offset spending. Elon Musk has also chimed in, posting on his website X that “this bill should not pass, any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserved to be voted out in 2 years!”

Some more mainstream members have also voiced opposition to the “Christmas tree bill,” with, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) arguing that Republican leadership “should be fighting to deliver wins for our members, not the Democrats.”

Some House Democrats have also signaled their intention to oppose the bill, such as Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME). In a statement put out by his office, Golden cited the congressional pay raise, as well as the addition of more generous healthcare benefits for members, as his rationale for not backing the bill.

Faced with heavy opposition, Johnson’s leadership team is reportedly considering a plan B. The backup plan would drop the $100 billion in disaster aid and the $30 billion in farmer aid, among many other attachments, and focus on passing a “clean CR,” and then dealing with the other issues in the new year.

Whichever path Johnson and fellow leaders choose to take, they will need to act quickly. If the CR is able to pass the House, it will still need to be considered and voted on by the Senate, all before midnight on Friday.

Trump Picks Jay Bhattacharya to lead NIH

Posted on December 11, 2024

President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to be his Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NIH is the nation’s leading public research agency. Research supported by the agency has led to more than 100 Nobel Prizes and over 99 percent of the drugs approved by federal regulators from 2010 to 2019. The agency gives out roughly $25 billion in research grants to universities each year. The UW is one of the top recipients of NIH grant funding.

Dr. Bhattacharya, a Stanford physician and economist, gained prominence during the pandemic for his criticism of lockdown procedures. According to his Stanford colleagues, Bhattacharya has been described as warm and intellectually curious, and supportive of their pursuits. It wasn’t until the Covid pandemic that Bhattacharya gained national prominence and attracted controversy. During the pandemic, Dr. Bhattacharya called for “an absolute revamping of the scientific community,” and has promised to “reform American scientific institutions so that they are worthy of trust again.”

In October 2020, along with two fellow academics, he co-wrote the Great Barrington Declaration. The declaration called on public health officials to roll back Covid lockdowns. The proposal advocated for “herd immunity” as the most effective way for handling the pandemic and advocated for a new approach that would “allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally and build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk.” The declaration sparked an intense negative reaction from the public health establishment.

Since the pandemic, Dr. Bhattacharya has often found himself in conflict with many of the organization’s leaders. Following his authoring of the Great Barrington Declaration, he accused the government of working with social media companies to suppress his views, though a recent Supreme Court ruling found that this claim was false. Still, Bhattacharya has argued that his experiences in recent years have taught him that agency officials, notably Dr. Anthony Fauci, have amassed too much power.

He recently told the Washington Post that he would “restructure the NIH to allow there to be many more centers of power, so that you couldn’t have a small number of scientific bureaucrats dominating a field for a very long time.” To do so, he proposed term limits for scientists running various research centers and shrinking the number of institutes from 27 to 15. He also has said that one of his main goals would be working to rebuild public trust in the American public health establishment, which he has lost “almost all confidence in.”

Other potential priorities floated by Bhattacharya include reducing the amount of NIH grant money that pays for publication in journals, funding studies to replicate the work of scientists in order to root out fraud and encouraging a more open discussion of scientific ideas by publishing studies alongside comments by named reviewers.

Bhattacharya will need to be confirmed by the Senate before officially taking the post.

Debate Opens on NDAA

Posted on December 11, 2024

This week, the House officially voted to open debate on the final version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The NDAA, passed annually by Congress for the past 60 years, provides authorization of appropriations for the Department of Defense, the nuclear weapons program under the Department of Energy, and other defense-related activities. While the NDAA does not actually appropriate any money, it provides Congressional authority and guidance for the various agencies including policy initiatives and how funding should be used, thus playing a crucial role in setting defense priorities and making organizational changes to military agencies.

The bill authorizes $896 billion in spending, including a 14.5 percent pay raise for junior enlisted troops.

While typically one of the more bipartisan bills, this year’s NDAA includes a controversial provision that led to Democratic opposition in the vote to open debate. The compromise version of the bill, which was introduced on Sunday, includes a measure that would prohibit Tricare from covering gender dysphoria treatments “that could result in sterilization” for children under 18. The provision is based on an amendment added by Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC) to the Senate version of the bill.

Many Democrats, including the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), have voiced their concerns about the inclusion of this amendment, casting doubt on its ability to pass with a razor-thin Republican majority in the House. Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT) said on the House floor that “military families deserve healthcare that they need, and this included gender-affirming care options for their children.”

Democrats have asserted that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) included the measure in order to appease his right flank ahead of January’s Speaker election. In a statement, Johnson defended the move, asserting that the legislation “included House-passed provisions to restore our focus on military lethality and to end the radical woke ideology being imposed on our military by permanently banning transgender medical treatment for minors and countering antisemitism.”

A number of other controversial proposals were not included in the final bill, including Section 220 the “Prohibition on Award of Research or Development Contracts or Grants to Educational Institutions that Have Violated Certain Civil Rights.” Section 220 was opposed by most higher education institutions as well as by the Department of Defense.

With the bill now coming to a vote this week, many Democrats will be faced with a difficult decision. While gender-affirming care is a red-line for many Democrats, others will find it difficult to oppose a massive defense bill that includes many bipartisan provisions.

If the NDAA passes in the House, it will head to the Senate to be voted on next week.

Congress Debates Another CR

Posted on November 20, 2024

The Continuing Resolution (CR) that Congress passed in late September will fund the government through December 20^th. With that deadline now looming, lawmakers will have to decide whether to pursue another stop-gap measure, and push back the final approval of FY 2025, or attempt to pass an omnibus spending bill to fund the government through the rest of the fiscal year.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has indicated that he would prefer to pass another CR, likely funding the government through March of 2025. This would allow Republicans to exert greater control over the funding process, as they will hold majorities in both chambers in the 119^th Congress. This move would have the added benefit of preventing the Speaker from having to strike a large budget deal with a Democratically -controlled Senate and the Biden Administration—a move likely to be unpopular with his conservative base—before the Speaker election in January. Johnson is expected to run again for Speaker in the 119^th Congress.

Other lawmakers, however, have appeared reluctant to pass yet another CR. Top appropriators in the House and the Senate have voiced support for working to pass full FY 2025 spending bills before the end of the lame-duck session. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), who will chair the Senate Appropriations Committee come January, has said that it is “very much in the interest of the new administration” to resolve the budget now, thus avoiding a budget fight in the first 100 days of the new Trump Administration.

Defense hawks and Pentagon officials have also vocally opposed a CR, arguing that maintaining the current funding levels interferes with their ability to run programs effectively. Senator Rodger Wicker (R-MS), who will chair the Senate Armed Services Committee next year, has said that Congress needs to stop passing short-term measures “at all costs.”

Republican leadership have indicated that the preference of President-elect Trump will factor heavily into their decision, though they have not spoken publicly about their conversations with him. Time is running out to begin discussions of omnibus bills, making a CR more likely. If Congress indeed passes another CR, it moves all FY 2025 decisions into the third quarter of the fiscal year at the earliest, which will put pressure on agencies to execute decisions and spend final funding.