News and updates

Congress returns work today after a one-week recess. They face a full agenda that includes figuring out how to respond to the situation in Crimea and deciding if a deal can be found to permanently address the “doc fix,” or if another short-term patch is needed (likely). Lawmakers have also scheduled a number of appropriations hearings. They will start with a trickle today but turn into a flood Tuesday and Wednesday. The FY 2015 appropriations season is officially underway!

In related news, the House Republicans are likely to propose a budget resolution in coming weeks that seeks deeper or accelerated cuts to entitlement programs and tighter constraints on discretionary spending as they aim to build support for the fiscal blueprint within the GOP. The budget resolution typically sets the stage for appropriations work, but the December budget deal already established spending caps for FY 2015 making the budget resolution moot. The plan taking shape in the House will almost certainly will stick with the higher FY 2015 discretionary cap of $1.014 trillion in the December budget deal, but will identify future cuts that could help to eliminate the deficit by the end of the decade. Budget experts say the most likely targets are reducing discretionary spending after 2015 and making deeper or faster reductions in entitlement and assistance programs such as Medicare and food stamps.

The House Budget Committee is likely to mark up their budget resolution during the first week of April, with the measure going to the House floor the following week.

In his FY2015 budget request, President Obama is calling for replacing the sequester but Members of Congress see little reason to open that can of worms – at least for this year. Members from both parties are saying that the two-year budget deal Congress approved in December has reduced the urgency to address future mandatory and discretionary spending cuts due to take effect again in 2016. Many say they do not expect any major efforts to adjust or undo the sequester framework until closer to when the current agreement expires on September 30, 2015.

But the December budget deal set a precedent for chipping away at the deficit reduction law and sequestration, so many Members predict that Congress will eventually go back and undo the remaining years of the spending caps. Our very own Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), also the current Senate Budget Chairwoman who helped write the December budget deal, has said she is willing to forge another accord to eliminate the sequester entirely.

As a reminder, the December budget agreement brokered a short-term truce by boosting discretionary spending levels for FY2014 and FY2015. But the deal did not address the remaining years of tight spending caps, which stretch through 2021 for discretionary and 2024 for mandatory programs. The President’s FY2015 budget request proposes replacing those cuts starting in FY2016, using a combination of mandatory spending cuts, new tax revenue, and the enactment of immigration overhaul legislation but Congress is unlikely to act on those proposals this year.

Congress returns to Capitol Hill today and will continue to debate what, and how much, help to offer Ukraine in its ongoing confrontation with Russia. The House will attempt to take up a non-binding resolution expressing support for Ukraine, but the fate of that measure is uncertain. In the Senate, members will likely pass a bill to toughen prosecution of sexual assaults in the military today, and then several Democrats plan an all-night talk session on climate change. Cloture motions also are pending on four more district judges and a Treasury nomination. Finally, the White House released the final pieces of its FY2015 budget proposal this morning.

FY2015 Appropriations

Appropriators in both chambers are planning an aggressive timetable for fiscal 2015 spending bills aiming for markups in May and floor action over the summer with hopes of having many of them enacted when the new fiscal year begins October 1st. Lawmakers intend to mark up FY2015 bills at the levels set by last December’s budget agreement (PL 113-67). That would exclude Obama’s requested “Opportunity, Growth and Security” initiative, which proposes an additional $56 billion in spending on defense and non-defense priorities. It is possible, however, that Republicans’ interest in spending more on defense programs could be the start of negotiations that would lead to legislation modifying that December budget deal to allow extra spending on the new initiative.

But even as appropriators show some signs of unity on the process, some observers already are questioning whether the largest non-defense spending bill—Labor-HHS-Education—can be completed as a stand-alone measure in a steeply divided Congress. That measure, set at $158 billion for FY2014 (current year), is a stark example of the deep divide between the parties on social issues. It funds the programs that are anathema for Republicans but bread-and-butter for Democrats. Because it houses so many social programs, the bill is a lightning rod for battles over social issues. Some advocates of domestic programs said their expectations are not very high for the bill, and some are already speculating that Congress will approve a continuing resolution for that measure, at least until after the election. If they do this, then the outcome of the November elections will determine the fate of the underlying programs for the rest of FY2015.