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House Budget Committee Approves GOP Framework

On Thursday night, the House Budget Committee advanced their budget resolution, the first legislative step toward fulfilling Donald Trump’s policy agenda. The fiscal blueprint was advanced in a 21-16 party line vote after GOP hardliners on the committee were brought on board following weeks of negotiations. The next step for the resolution is a floor vote in the House, another difficult task with the GOP’s razor-thin majority.

The budget resolution contains reconciliation instructions, meaning that, if adopted by both chambers, it will instruct certain committees to draft legislation implementing spending changes. Each committee that receives instructions then writes a bill to achieve the prescribed target, before the bills are packaged into one large piece of legislation. Crucially, this legislation cannot be filibustered in the Senate, meaning that it can be passed by a simple majority in both chambers.

The passage out of committee comes after weeks of negotiations and infighting among House Republicans, with Budget Committee hardliners holding up passage by demanding larger spending cuts. The uncertainty in the House led Senate GOP leaders to introduce their own budget resolution last week. Senate Republicans largely favor a two-step reconciliation approach, with border security, defense, and energy being tackled early in the year and tax cuts receiving a separate legislative package later on. House GOP leaders, on the other hand, favor the Trump-backed plan to advance the entire legislative package in “one big, beautiful bill.” The passage of their resolution out of the Budget Committee brings them one step closer to achieving this goal.

The resolution, which House Budget Chair Joey Arrington (R-TX) called “the fiscal framework for what will be one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in modern history,” instructs the House Ways and Means Committee to come up with tax cuts that will increase the deficit by up to $4.5 trillion over a decade. It orders other committees, including the Education and Workforce, Energy and Commerce, and Agriculture Committees, to cut at least $1.5 trillion from mandatory spending programs to help offset these tax cuts.

The House is set to schedule a vote on the resolution during the last week of February.

As noted above, the Senate Republicans’ preference on reconciliation is through two bills and the Senate Budget Committee approved its first budget resolution on Wednesday.  The two chambers will need to bridge their differences along the way.

RFK Jr. Confirmed

Late Thursday morning, the Senate confirmed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services in a 52-48 vote.

All but one Republican voted in favor of confirmation, the lone exception being Mitch McConnell who joined all Democrats in opposition.

Trump named Kennedy as his nominee to lead the HHS in November after Kennedy dropped his own presidential bid and endorsed Trump. Kennedy now becomes the top health official in the nation, responsible for overseeing the department’s nearly $2 trillion budget.

Multiple Lawsuits Filed Against NIH Indirect Cost Move

On Monday, two separate lawsuits were filed in response to a policy change from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced late Friday. In the first suit, filed Monday morning, attorneys general from 22 states, including Washington, sought to prevent NIH’s move to unilaterally lower the “indirect cost” rates on research grants to 15 percent.

The action in question occurred Friday evening, when the NIH announced a significant reduction in grant funding for research institutions. The announcement declared that the NIH will limit the amount granted to research universities for indirect costs at 15 percent moving forward, on both future and existing grants.

Indirect costs, also referred to as “facilities and administration” (F&A) costs, are the essential-but-behind-the-scenes costs of conducting research. These costs include, but are not limited to, laboratory materials, high-speed data processing, security protections, patient safety, radiation safety and hazardous waste disposal, personnel required to support administrative and compliance work, and many other necessary activities.

Typically, when the government provides a grant to a research university, it includes support for both direct and indirect costs. The indirect cost rates are based on allowable direct costs of research that can be assigned to a research grant. Historically, the federal government has reimbursed the university for a percentage of these allowable direct costs. Indirect costs are never fully reimbursed by the federal government, meaning full costs of research are never fully recovered by the institution performing the research. The level of F&A expenses that the federal government covers for each institution is determined by either the Department of Defense Office of Naval Research or the Department of Health and Human Services and is reviewed every 2 to 4 years through a comprehensive negotiation process.

Late last evening, the court in Massachusetts issued a temporary restraining order against the NIH in response to the suit.

Given the potential implications of such a move by the NIH, three higher education associations in which UW is active—the Association of American Universities (AAU), Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), and American Council on Education (ACE)—took the unprecedented step of also filing a separate lawsuit against the agency Monday evening. The suit seeks a temporary restraining order as well as an injunction against the NIH.

Currently, as a result of the language in funding bills for the NIH dating back to FY2017, the NIH is prohibited from lowering the indirect cost rates unilaterally.

The NIH’s move has received criticism from several Members of the Senate, including Republicans. Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-ME), has issued a statement strongly opposing the NIH move. Republican Senator Katie Britt of Alabama issued a statement encouraging the agency to take a “smart, targeted approach…in order to not hinder life-saving, groundbreaking research at high-achieving institutions…”

Over the weekend, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the Ranking Member of the Appropriations Committee, issued a statement raising strong objections about the NIH move.

Please continue to check back here for additional updates.

Federal Funding Freeze Rescinded

A controversial memo released by the Trump Administration last week has been rescinded after a federal judge in Rhode Island temporarily blocked it. Just over a week after the inauguration, the new administration announced that it would temporarily halt federal payments to ensure that they were ideologically aligned with the administration’s priorities. The order caused wide-spread concern before U.S. District Chief Judge John McConnel of Rhode Island granted the request for a temporary restraining order sought by a coalition of Democratic-led states, preventing the now-rescinded memo from taking effect. Links to the documents can be found below.

Temporary Restraining Order

Original Office of Management and Budget Memo

 

 

 

 

Tentative Budget Reconciliation Schedule

President Trump and GOP leadership are moving forward with their plan to advance their agenda through the budget reconciliation process. The tentative schedule of the process is as follows:

Week of Feb. 10: House Budget Committee approves a budget resolution, followed by a House floor vote

Week of Feb. 17: Senate vote-a-rama to adopt a budget resolution

A week to negotiate a bicameral resolution that serves as a compromise between the House and Senate plans

Feb 27: Final vote to adopt a concurrent budget resolution backed by Republicans in both chambers

By Easter (April 20): Pass a reconciliation package in the House floor

By Memorial Day: Final passage