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Author: Christy Gullion

September Stalemate on FY14 Appropriations

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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.

GSA Science Policy Fellowship Opportunity in Washington, DC

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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.

FY14 Appropriations Update

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Appropriations:  This week, House appropriators are expected to approve a plan for writing FY14 spending bills that would make deep cuts in domestic programs in order to protect defense programs. The overall figure will adhere to the spending caps set by recent budget agreements and assumes the sequester will apply to FY14 without a larger agreement to cut the deficit. At question is how the overall amount will be divided between the 12 annual spending bills. The GOP approach makes it clear that they intend to preserve national security spending at the expense of domestic programs favored by Democrats.

The allocations provide a combined $625 billion in FY14 for the Defense, Military Construction-VA, and Homeland Security bills, which would be a cut of $4 billion, or less than one percent, from the current enacted level. Discretionary spending in the rest of the government — covered by the other nine spending bills, including the Labor-HHS-ED bill — would be cut by about $72 billion, or 17 percent, from current levels.

The Labor-HHS-ED bill would provide $121.8 billion, about $35 billion, or 22 percent, less than the current level. House Appropriations Committee Chairman, Hal Rogers (R-KY) has not ruled out increases in spending allocations if lawmakers can come to a broad budget accord to reduce the deficit and replace the sequester. But for now, House Republicans appear to have adopted a strategy of back-loading the cuts on bills, such as Labor-HHS-Education, to buy them some time for possible negotiations.

Debt Ceiling:  The debt ceiling increase debate is one issue that appears to be off table in budget negotiations. With the law suspending the ceiling on federal borrowing authority expiring over the weekend, on Friday Treasury Secretary Lew formally told lawmakers that Congress won’t need to raise the debt limit again until after Labor Day. When the legislation was approved earlier this year, it was assumed the debt limit would need to be increased by late spring or early summer. Lew reiterated the Administration’s pledge that it won’t negotiate with Congress over the debt ceiling, despite ongoing talks among Republican lawmakers aimed at a strategy of using the need to raise the debt limit as leverage in a broader debate over tax and spending policy.

House GOP Proposes Austere FY14 Appropriations Plan

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Late yesterday, the House Republicans released new spending targets for FY14 appropriations bills. Under the GOP numbers, the Labor-HHS-ED bill will face a nearly 20 percent reduction on top of the cuts already made in the March 1st sequestration order. These programs would be capped at $121.8 billion — or about $28 billion below the best available estimates for post-sequestration appropriations. This represents $42 billion, or 26 percent, below what was enacted in FY10. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-KY) appears to be scaling back spending for these programs, as well as for transportation, housing, environmental, and natural resources programs, in order to provide significant increases for a few of the 12 annual bills this summer. For example, Pentagon spending would rise to $512.5 billion, a roughly 6 percent increase over the reduced levels allowed under sequestration. We expect similar increases for Military-VA and Homeland Security.

Meanwhile, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), whose state is home to the NIH, pledged to work with the top senators on the Labor-HHS-ED subcommittee to ensure they get an appropriate allocation to fund these programs. The Democrat said she is “worried about the sequester’s effect on the people who work at NIH as well as extramural programs such as those run by universities.” Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL), the top Republican on the full committee, said he would work with Mikulski to try to increase funding for NIH in the face of the sequester. Other Senators also pledged their support for NIH funding, including Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Jerry Moran (R-KS) – top ranking members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee. But despite the bipartisan support, there are still concerns that GOP priorities would prevent Congress from giving NIH the necessary funding resources.

The Office of Federal Relations continues to remind the Washington state delegation about the substantial fiscal impact NIH grant funding has on our economy. Please contact us if you have information that will help inform Members of Congress about the importance of NIH funding.

Appropriations, Sequestration, and Immigration

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The Senate is in session today at 2:00pm but there will be no votes today. The House will be back in session at noon Tuesday.

Appropriations: The House GOP plans to begin drafting their FY2014 spending bills to adhere to the roughly $967 billion spending cap set by recent budget law, which also reflects the sequester. The Senate Democrats, on the other hand, appear ready to ignore the sequester and instead mark up their FY2014 bills under a $1.058 trillion cap.

The House Appropriations Committee is expected to start the FY2014 process with two relatively non-controversial bills: Military Construction & Veterans Affairs and Defense. The Senate Appropriations Committee has not yet scheduled any FY2014 markups, but has a full slate of budget hearings planned with administration officials this week.

Sequestration:  The sequester was designed to be so bad that lawmakers would never allow it to happen. But it did happen and now many members of Congress are looking to protect their favorite federal programs from some or all of the effects of sequestration. After easing some pain for the FAA a couple of weeks ago, the shortlist for the next round of possible sequester saves includes cancer patients, medical researchers, hungry seniors, poor people, and pre-schoolers.

There are already more than a dozen pieces of stand-alone legislation introduced to address agencies, programs and accounts hit by sequestration. Whether any one proposal has a shot at becoming law requires a confluence of events. It needs bipartisan support and at least some semblance of a spending offset to cover the costs. And public outcry from the Americans across the country helps as well.

Here’s a small sample of other sequester fixes also waiting in the wings: Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) would exempt the NIH; Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-WA) would ensure that civilian Pentagon employees who get furloughed don’t lose access to classified information; the New York delegation is trying to protect September 11th health and compensation programs; Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-MS) wants to prevent furloughs for members of the National Guard who work full time as uniformed civilians maintaining equipment; Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) hopes to save the TIGER transportation grant program; Reps. Betty McCollum (D-MN) and Tom Cole (R-OK) have a bill to exempt the Indian Health Service fund; Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Mark Udall (D-CO) are releasing a new version of legislation this week that would give agency heads more flexibility in how they implement the budget cuts.

We expect this sort of legislation to consume much of the public debate in Congress throughout the summer and fall.

Immigration: The Senate Judiciary Committee will resume their work on a comprehensive overhaul of immigration laws (S 744) Tuesday and Thursday with members of the chamber’s so-called gang of eight focused on which of hundreds of amendments filed could be potential deal-breakers. The committee chairman has said he hopes to finish the markup before Congress breaks for Memorial Day recess in two weeks.