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Author: Sarah Castro

Reviewed 9/22

CR Released, Should Pass This Week

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The continuing resolution (CR) was released late last night. The text of the legislation is here. The big news is that the CR will fund the federal government through April 28, 2017. The legislation maintains the current budget cap level of $1.07 trillion put into place under the Budget Control Act of 2011, which results in an across the board cut of .1901%.

The House is expected to vote on the measure on Thursday and the Senate is expected to follow suit on Friday. 

Big Items of Note: 

The Defense Overseas Contingency Fund, which is not subject to budget caps, was increased by $8 billion in response to the Administration’s request to combat ISIS. Of note, the Administration asked for $11.6 billion.  The CR increase does include RDT&E funding that is related to the Global War on Terrorism and the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Fund received a $87M increase.  The funding will go to both defense-specific funding to combat ISIS as well as non-military spending — such as Humanitarian Assistance, State Department and USAID operations funding, Economic and Stabilization Assistance, and Embassy security funding — to combat ISIS. 

The CR does add funding in FY 2017 to accounts created and highlighted in the Cures bill for opioids, NIH and FDA initiatives, and Flint drinking water. The Cures funding is fully offset per the authorizing bill. Specifically, the totals for the year amount to: 

  • $500 million in grants to states to fight opioid abuse, 
  • $352 for the new NIH Innovations Fund (as created by Cures), 
  • $20 million directed to the FDA Innovation account (as created by cures), and  
  • $50 million is directed to HHS to address health issues relating to a lead-tainted drinking water system in Michigan. 

There is a provision to address President-elect Trump’s Secretary of Defense nominee, Ret. USMC Gen. James. Mattis, who left service three years ago. Under a 1947 federal statute, Secretaries of Defense must be civilians or retired from service for at least 7 years to be eligible to serve; its an effort to assure civilian control of the military. This requirement has been waived once in 1950 for General George C. Marshall. 

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Other Items of Note:

There is additional funding to allow continued operations and data collection for continuation of data for weather warnings, including forecasts of severe weather events from NOAA’s Joint Polar Satellite System.

There is a provision allowing additional funding, if needed, for the housing and care of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) after February 1, 2017. The number of UACs has been spiking as of late and was an issue for the FY2017 appropriations cycle. Of note, this funding comes from the Labor-H appropriations bill. 

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Additional updates will be posted on our blog. 

CR to be Unveiled Today

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The House Leadership has announce that it will release the long-anticipated and negotiated continuing resolution (CR) today. The CR is not expected to have many anomalies and should be level funding from FY 2016 levels.  While there has been much negotiation between an end date in March 2017 or an end date in May 2017, the current thought is that the CR will continue federal funding until April 28, 2017. The current CR expires at midnight on Friday.

CR details will be posted as soon as they are available.

Senate Passed Cloture on Cures, NDAA & Cures to Pass Wednesday

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The Senate invoked cloture Monday evening on legislation (HR 34, 21st Century Cures) designed to spur medical innovation. Eighty-five Senators supported the motion to limit debate and proceed with a vote on the measure.

It takes two days for a cloture motion to limit debate to “ripen,” and there already is one pending on the defense bill that authorizes myriad Pentagon programs and activities. Other measures are in limbo, with some senators trying to extract end-of-the-year concessions by threatening to stall action and not consent to expediting passage of popular legislation. This means a vote is likely on Wednesday, when McConnell can stack multiple roll call votes together,  so Cures will be immediately followed by a big procedural vote on the FY 2017 NDAA conference report .

The legislation includes $6.3 billion over a decade deposited in three dedicated funds that funnel money to the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and to the states to respond to the growing opioid abuse crisis. The drawdown of that funding would need to be approved by federal appropriators each year. The money would be earmarked for President  Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative, the cancer “moonshot” program backed by Vice President  Biden, and  the NIH BRAIN initiative.

The Senate is expected to clear the bill this week and Obama is expected to sign it. Biden was presiding over the chamber Monday for the vote.

 

Congressional Leaders Ask Trump to Keep Collins

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Late Friday, four key Republican health care leaders sent a letter to President-elect Trump asking him to retain NIH’s Francis Collins. The letter was signed by the chairmen of the Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations Subcommittees from both chambers, Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) and Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO). It was also signed by Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI).

These crucial Members of Congress are the Republican leadership in health and NIH and include, the outgoing House and Energy Commerce chairman (Fred Upton), Senate HELP committee chairman (Lamar Alexander), and the two chairmen of the appropriations committees that oversee NIH: (Senator Roy Blunt and Congressman Tom Cole).

Home for the Holidays?

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The plan is for Congress to finish all its work for the year this week, with a stopgap spending measure to fund the government through next Spring. When in Spring? That’s still a very good question. 

The House Republicans held a conference meeting on Friday that did not resolve how long the stopgap should last or precisely what level of spending it should allow. Without conference agreement, only a handful of House and Senate GOP leaders and staff will decide the substance of a bill that will shape government spending for at least the better part of the current fiscal year. 

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said his goal is to complete all House action by Thursday, but the true deadline is this midnight on Friday, December 9th. That is when the previous CR expires. Failure to pass a new bill would trigger a government shutdown. The new measure will most likely extend current funding levels for most federal agencies through sometime between March and May. A precise timeline had yet to be decided.

Writing the continuing resolution, which generally forbids any new projects, also requires including provisions that allow agencies to make adjustments in their spending to meet changing needs; these are called anomalies. The Pentagon already has complained to budget writers that a long-term stopgap risks doing harm to needed weapons programs and troops currently deployed overseas. While each CR does have a limited amount of anomalies, do not expect broad sweeping increases, such as a multi-billion increase to NIH. 

As the House takes the first steps on the CR, the Senate will consider both 21st Century Cures and the NDAA conference report this week.