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This Week in Congress

An overview of relevant House and Senate committee hearings and markups on the schedule this week:

TUESDAY, June 4th

Senate Appropriations
2014 Appropriations: Transportation, HUD
Subcommittee Hearing
2:30 pm, 138 Dirksen

House Science, Space, & Technology
STEM Education Reorganization
Full Committee Hearing
2 pm, 2318 Rayburn

WEDNESDAY, June 5th

Senate Appropriations
2014 Appropriations: Defense
Subcommittee Hearing
10 am, 192 Dirksen

Senate Appropriations
2014 Appropriations: Labor, HHS, Education
Subcommittee Hearing
10 am, 138 Dirksen

Senate Veterans’ Affairs
Veterans Benefits Legislation
Full Committee Hearing
10 am, 418 Russell

House Armed Services
Defense Authorization
Full Committee Markup
10 am, 2118 Rayburn

THURSDAY, June 6th

Senate Appropriations
2014 Appropriations: Commerce, Justice, Science
Subcommittee Hearing
10 am, 192 Dirksen

September Stalemate on FY14 Appropriations

Members of Congress return to DC this week to take on the farm bill, try to keep student loan interest rates from doubling on July 1st, and continue with the FY14 appropriations process. And while immigration reform is still being debated, some are now skeptical that the House and Senate can come get to a compromise.

FY14 Appropriations

The path to enacting FY14 appropriations measures is paved with legislative friction as Congress is showing no signs of undoing the sequester. At this point, there are three budgets — House, Senate, and White House — all of which assume no sequestration, but include different ways to account for the cuts in later years. House Republicans would meet the overall cap but ignore the mandated split between security and non-security spending. Senate Democrats would use a higher overall level. And the White House budget request also ignores the overall cap. This is all leading up to a September stalemate as the current fiscal year comes to a close on September 30th.

Meanwhile, House Appropriations subcommittees approved their first two spending bills before Memorial Day (Homeland Security and Military Construction/Veterans Affairs), each with just a slight increase over current levels. These slight increases, along with spending increases expected in the soon-to-be-considered Defense bill, won’t leave much for the remaining non-defense bills – including the Labor-HHS-ED bill – which will have to take significant cuts to reach post-sequester levels as outlined by the 302(b) allocations approved in the House last month.

The Senate hasn’t approved its 302(b) allocations nor released any spending bills, but we expect to see Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Senator Mikulski (D-MD) move forward with FY 2014 using a top line spending number that assumes the sequester has been replaced.

FY15 Budget Process Underway

In Washington, DC there are usually three budget cycles ongoing at any given time. Right now, federal agencies are spending FY13 money; Congress is working to approve spending levels for FY14, which starts on October 1st; and federal agencies are beginning to build their FY15 budget requests. To guide this process, the White House released its annual guidance memo last week. This guidance memo noted that the President still hopes to replace the sequester with a combination of spending cuts and changes in entitlements and the tax code. But OMB Director Burwell effectively told agencies to plan for sequester by asking them for proposals that “reflect a 5 percent reduction below the net discretionary total provided for your agency for 2015 in the 2014 budget” as well as a plan that would double that reduction in 2015 to 10 percent. Agency budget requests will be submitted to the White House later this fall and ultimately combine to form the President’s budget delivered to Congress (usually) in early February.

OMB issues guidance to agencies for FY2015

This week, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued budget guidance to all agency and department heads the the Fiscal Year 2015 Budgets submissions to OMB. In short, the overall submission should be at least 5% less but should aim for a 10% cut to the net discretionary total provided for to each agency for 2015 in the 2014 Budget.

The OMB guidance can be found here.

GSA Science Policy Fellowship Opportunity in Washington, DC

The Geological Society of America (GSA) is seeking applicants for its Science Policy Fellowship Program. The fellowship provides a recent MS or PhD recipient the opportunity to work in the GSA Washington Office for one year. The fellow works with the GSA Director for Geoscience Policy to participate in a range of science-policy activities. The fellow will attend congressional meetings and hearings, agency briefings, seminars, and coalition sessions and will develop communication methods to disseminate this information to GSA members. The fellow will also participate in GSA programs.

The fellow will receive a competitive stipend and healthcare stipend. Funds are also available for fellowship-related travel. The start date is flexible, and could be as early as 1 August 2013. Interested candidates should send a cover letter, CV/resume, writing sample, and list of three references to Kasey White at kwhite@geosociety.org. Consideration of applications will begin July 1, 2013.

This Week in Congress

Both the House and Senate are in their Memorial Day recess this week, so there are no votes or committee meetings scheduled.

When Congress returns next week, the full Senate is expected to consider a comprehensive immigration reform bill created by the bipartisan ‘Gang of Eight’ which was cleared out of committee last week. Congress will also be working towards a temporary or permanent fix for the student loan interest rate – set to rise from 3.4% to 6.8% on July 1st absent any action.