Last night, Senator McConnell filed cloture last night on a motion to proceed to H.R. 2740, which you may recall is the most expansive/expensive of all the spending packages and includes Labor-HHS, Defense, State/Foreign Ops, and Energy and Water. A successful vote on Wednesday means that the Senate floor debate could begin on this bill with new text from the Senate Republicans. The consideration would not be without a fight from Senate Democrats who want more of their priorities included in the bill and higher spending numbers for the Labor-HHS bill.
Author: Sarah Castro
Reviewed 9/22
President’s FY2020 Budget
Today, the Administration released its FY 2020 President’s budget request (PBR) to Congress. This budget is the first step in the annual Congressional appropriations cycle. The annual PBR is a political and policy document indicative of the goals of the Administration for the coming year.
The $4.7 trillion FY 2020 budget released today would sharply reduce spending on safety-net programs, while effectively exempting the Pentagon from strict spending caps set to take effect in FY 2020.
The PBR assumes the scheduled FY 2020 and 2021 sequester cuts to domestic spending, which is effectively a 10 percent reduction to nondefense programs from current levels. The budget would reduce the overall level of nondefense spending by nearly $30 billion reduction and would increase military spending by 5 percent, to $750 billion from $716 billion received in FY 2019. It requests $8.6 billion for new barriers along the southern U.S. border, including $5 billion for the Department of Homeland Security and $3.6 billion for the Defense Department’s military-construction budget. The president’s blueprint would also provide additional funding to boost manpower at Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, and it proposes policy changes to end so-called sanctuary cities.
The Administration’s budget proposed $2.7 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade of which $1.9 trillion is cuts to mandatory spending programs. Specifically within those programs, the Administration proposes to cut $22 billion from safety-net programs next year—$327 billion over the next decade—and proposes new work requirements for recipients of food stamps, Medicaid, and federal housing programs.
Within the discretionary nondefense side of the ledger, cuts were proposed to:
- $87.1 billion for HHS (a 12 percent cut)
- $34.36 billion for NIH (a 12 percent or $4.9 billion cut)
- $5.8 billion for HRSA (a $1 billion cut)
- $5.27 billion for CDC (a $1.2 billion cut)
- $31.7 billion for Energy, (an 11 percent cut) and requests $5.5 billion for Office of Science (a 9 percent decrease) while eliminating Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E)
- $62.0 billion for ED (an $8.5 billion or 12 percent cut) and eliminating, Public Service Loan Forgiveness, Supporting Effective Instruction State Grants, 21st Century Community Learning Centers, and Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants
- $12.2 billion for Commerce (a $1.0 billion or a 9.3-percent increase), but eliminations to the Sea Grant, Coastal Zone Management Grants, and the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund.
- $12.5 billion for Interior (a 14 percent cut)
- $7.1 billion for NSF (a 9 percent cut)
- $21 billion for NASA (a 1.4 percent increase)
The budget specifics for HHS, ED, Energy, DOD, Interior, NOAA, and NASA should be forthcoming this week.
Other items included in the budget, the PBR proposes to streamline student loan repayment by consolidating multiple IDR plans into a single plan. The Single IDR plan would cap a borrower’s monthly payment at 12.5 percent of discretionary income. For undergraduate borrowers, any balance remaining after 180 months of repayment would be forgiven. For borrowers with any graduate debt, any balance remaining after 30 years of repayment would be forgiven. It would expand Pell Grant eligibility to include high-quality short-term programs. The budget proposes to restructure and streamline the TRIO and GEAR UP programs by consolidating them into a $950 million State formula grant.
NIH would continue to address the opioid epidemic, make progress on developing a universal flu vaccine, and support the next generation of researchers. The PBR includes a new, dedicated effort to support research and develop new treatments for childhood cancer. Cancer is the leading cause of death from disease among children and adolescents in the United States. The basic biology of childhood cancers is not fully understood and differs from that of adult cancers. The Budget includes increased funding and an innovative initiative to enable the Nation’s best researchers and doctors to learn from every child with cancer, providing the opportunity to comprehend finally the unique causes and the best cures for childhood cancer.
NSF and NASA Resumption of Operations
The National Science Foundation issued the following notice concerning the reopening of the government:
A Resumption of Operations at NSF page has been developed that includes Important Notice No. 145, Resumption of Operations at the National Science Foundation, dated January 28, 2019, as well as supplemental guidance that addresses grant and cooperative agreement-related policy and systems issues. This page will be of interest to your membership and we would appreciate your sharing this link as soon as possible. This page will continue to be updated as new information becomes available.
Policy-related questions regarding resumption of operations at NSF may be addressed to policy@nsf.gov.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine issued a message to the NASA workforce today.
CBO: Shutdown Cost $11B
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released a report today that the recent 35 day, 5 week government shutdown cost the U.S. economy $11 billion. Other take aways:
- It permanently lost $3 billion in economic activity for the 4th quarter.
- The shutdown delayed approximately $18 billion in federal discretionary spending for compensation and purchases of goods and services and suspended some federal services.
- The level of real GDP in the first quarter of 2019 is expected to be reduced by 0.2 percent, or $8 billion less than it would have been if the government had been open.
Three Week Deal…Some Ancillary Fixes
As part of the three week deal signed into law on Saturday, the measure (H.J.Res. 28) would reopen the nine Cabinet departments and several independent agencies closed during the shutdown through February 15. Beyond funding these agencies, there were other significant items included in this agreement.
Back Pay
Federal employees will receive back pay as part of the agreement. Most employees should be expect to receive their two missed paychecks by the end of the week. Government contractors may or may not receive missed pay depending on the nature of their contract. States or grantees that helped fill the gap during the shutdown can expect to be reimbursed.
Conference Committee
As part of the agreement, the House and Senate will convene a conference committee to work out a deal on FY 2019 Homeland Security spending, including the fate of the Administration’s demand for $5.7 billion for border wall construction, which is spending Congressional Democrats have long opposed.
Pay-Go
Under the Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2010 (PL 111-139), the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is supposed to issue a report within 14 days after the end of a Congressional session outlining whether enacted laws added to the deficit over five or 10 years. If so, then the OMB has to implement across-the-board cuts to any programs not exempt from the statute, to eliminate the excess.
Routinely, since the 2010 law was enacted, Congress has simply decreed that certain pricey provisions will not be added. For example, Congress removed the impact of the $1.5 trillion, 10-year tax cuts from the OMB’s calculations as part the 2017 stopgap appropriations bill both were signed into law the same day.
The stopgap spending bill includes provisions delaying roughly $800 million in spending cuts, mainly (about 90 percent) impacting Medicare. Because Congress did not act in time, the OMB should have had to implement the cuts, but the shutdown delayed implementation.
That Pay-Go “debit” will pop up again next year unless Congress eliminates it once again on any FY 2019 final package. A House-passed, $271.8 billion package (HR 648) of six appropriations measures would have wipe out the scorecard’s existing debit, so only future legislation increasing deficits would count for the OMB’s calculations.