Yesterday the House approved a six-month continuing resolution (CR) to fund federal government past March 27th when the current CR expires. The bill would shift billions of dollars to military operations to help the Army and Navy cope with automatic spending cuts ordered by the sequester last week. The measure now moves to the Senate, where a bipartisan coalition hopes to expand on the package next week and give other Cabinet departments the same relief promised to the Pentagon. The Senate Democrat’s challenge will be to devise a package that can win enough GOP support to pass a bill. That makes it unlikely that they will be able to add one of the more controversial spending bills, the Labor-HHS-Education measure that funds NIH. They could however find enough bipartisan support to include some relief for Homeland, Commerce-Justice-Science, Agriculture, and Transportation-HUD.
News and updates
Newly Introduced Legislation
A roundup of bills introduced in the last week that may be of interest to the higher education community:
S. 406: The “Students First Act” – a bill to amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to provide for new program review requirements. The bill is designed to go after ‘bad actors’ in higher education – those that use tax dollars to aggressively market to vulnerable students in potentially illegal ways.
Sponsor: Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) Introduced: 2/28/2013 Last Major Action: Referred to Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Cosponsors: 3
Link to Lautenberg Press Release
S. 424: A bill to amend Title IV of the Public Health Service Act to provide for a National Pediatric Research Network, including with respect to pediatric rare diseases or conditions. The bill would authorize the Director of the NIH to award grants to create up to 8 research centers.
Sponsor: Sherrod Brown (D-OH) Introduced: 2/28/2013 Last Major Action: Referred to Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Cosponsors: 6
S. 426: A bill to amend the Public Health Service Act to provide for the participation of particular specialists determined by the Secretary of Health and Human Services to be directly related to the health needs stemming from environmental health hazards that have led to its declaration as a Public Health Emergency to be eligible under the National Health Service Corps in the National Health Service Corps Loan Repayment Program.
Sponsor: Jon Tester (D-MT) Introduced: 2/28/2013 Last Major Action: Referred to Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
Link to Baucus Press Release
S. 433: A bill to establish and operate a National Center for Campus Public Safety
Sponsor: Mark Warner (D-VA) Introduced: 2/28/2013 Last Major Action: Referred to Senate Judiciary Committee Cosponsors: 1
H.R. 891: A bill to establish a grant program in the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection to fund the establishment of centers of excellence to support research, development and planning, implementation, and evaluation of effective programs in financial literacy education for young people and families ages 8 through 24 years old.
Sponsor: Andre Carson (D-IN) Introduced: 2/28/2013 Last Major Action: Referred to House Committees on Financial Services and Education & the Workforce
Cosponsors: 0
H.R. 920: A bill to amend the Public Health Service Act to provide for the participation of optometrists in the National Health Service Corps Scholarship and Loan Repayment Programs.
Sponsor: Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) Introduced: 2/28/2013 Last Major Action: Referred to House Committee on Energy and Commerce Cosponsors: 7
The full text of these bills can be found by searching for their respective bill number at thomas.loc.gov
SNOW! Oh, and House Considers FY 2013 CR Today
Federal government is closed today due to an approaching snow storm in the Washington, DC area. It is currently snowing heavily and sideways outside my window, but it is wet snow and doesn’t appear to be sticking much yet. The National Weather Service has issued a winter storm warning through 3:00am Thursday morning, and the local ABC affiliate reports the metro region could get between 5 and 10 inches of snow with heavier snowfall in the suburbs.
All of this activity won’t keep the House from considering their legislative proposal to fund government for the remainder of FY 2013 (the current continuing resolution expires on March 27th). This morning the House will consider both the rule for and passage of the CR to fund the government, with votes wrapping up between 1:00pm and 1:30pm, which should give most members time to get out of town before the bulk of the snow hits the ground. Of course, this probably won’t help members like ours on the west coast as airports in the area have already started cancelling outbound flights.
The House is expected to pass the $984 billion CR today but it does not include much language to soften the blow of the sequester that went into effect last Friday. While it will give the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments more flexibility in implementing cuts, in addition to providing a few extra dollars for each, the proposal will do little to blunt the impact of sequestration on education and research programs.
The House bill would effectively cap regular FY 2013 discretionary spending at about $984 billion, with the sequester triggered on March 1st automatically slicing about $59 billion from the bill’s starting level of $1.043 trillion. That’s somewhat more spending than the $974 billion estimate offered by House Republicans before March 1st when the Office of Management and Budget released its final call on the sequester’s effects. The numbers changed after OMB removed the expenses of programs exempt from sequester, such as military pay, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and Pell grants, and added in other money that had not been included in the original assessment of federal spending, such as some unobligated balances.
The Senate may try to move stand alone bills to fund some areas of government rather than just approving another CR. So far they have made some progress on bills to fund Agriculture, Commerce-Science-Justice, and Homeland Security. With only two more working weeks before the two-week Easter recess it is hard to imagine that they will be able to accomplish this and also get the House to agree to that process.
Obama Orders Sequestration
Late last night, President Obama issued the order mandating sequester cuts across the federal government. Here is the order and link to the Office of Management and Budget’s report to Congress:
SEQUESTRATION ORDER FOR FISCAL YEAR 2013 PURSUANT TO SECTION 251A OF THE BALANCED BUDGET AND EMERGENCY DEFICIT CONTROL ACT, AS AMENDED
By the authority vested in me as President by the laws of the United States of America, and in accordance with section 251A of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act, as amended (the “Act”), 2 U.S.C. 901a, I hereby order that budgetary resources in each non-exempt budget account be reduced by the amount calculated by the Office of Management and Budget in its report to the Congress of March 1, 2013.
Pursuant to sections 250(c)(6), 251A, and 255(e) of the Act, budgetary resources subject to sequestration shall be new budget authority, unobligated balances of defense function accounts carried over from prior fiscal years, direct spending authority, and obligation limitations.
All sequestrations shall be made in strict accordance with the requirements of section 251A of the Act and the specifications of the Office of Management and Budget’s report of March 1, 2013, prepared pursuant to section 251A(11) of the Act.
BARACK OBAMA
THE WHITE HOUSE,
March 1, 2013
Next Week in Congress
Below are some congressional hearings scheduled for next week that we will be keeping our eye on and may be of interest to the UW community:
Tuesday, March 5
Senate Budget
Wasteful Spending in the Tax Code
10 am, 608 Dirksen
Senate Veterans’ Affairs & House Veterans’ Affairs
Legislative Priorities of Veterans Organizations
10 am, 345 Cannon
House Appropriations
FY14 Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations
10 am, H-309 Capitol Bldg
House Appropriations
FY14 Energy & Water Appropriations
10 am, 2362-B Rayburn
House Appropriations
FY14 Labor-HHS-Ed Appropriations
10 am, 2358-C Rayburn
House Energy & Commerce
American Energy Security and Innovation
10 am, 2322 Rayburn
House Judiciary
Skilled Immigration for American Competitiveness
10 am, 2141 Rayburn
Wednesday, March 6
Senate Veterans’ Affairs & House Veterans’ Affairs
Legislative Priorities of Veterans Organizations
10 am, 418 Russell
House Appropriations
FY14 Agriculture Appropriations
10 am, 2362-A Rayburn
House Appropriations
FY14 Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations
11 am, H-309 Capitol Bldg
Thursday, March 7
Senate Commerce, Science & Transportation (joint hearing with Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs)
Cybersecurity Issues
2:30 pm, G-50 Dirksen
Senate Energy & Natural Resources
Interior Department Nomination (** Sally Jewell)
10 am, 366 Dirksen
House Appropriations
FY14 Agriculture Appropriations
10 am, 2362-A Rayburn